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COPYRIGHT DEPOSn^ 



THE TRAINING 
OF FARMERS 



THE TRAINING 
OF FARMERS 



BY 



L. H. BAILEY 







NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1909 



.1)' 



<=>'\-^ 



Copyright, 1909, by 
L. H. Bailey 



Published October, 1909 



Z^IS^J^4. 



ANALYSIS 



PAGE 

THE NATUEE OF THE PROBLEM 6 

The schools and colleges — The indigenous forces 
— Individualism— Not an ''uplift." 

THE INSUFFICIENCIES IN COUNTRY LIFE . 15 
The better country life — Striking insuf&ciencies. 



PART I 
THE MEANS OF TRAINING FARMERS 

(Pages 21-82) 

RURAL GOVERNMENT 26 

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF STATE GOVERN- 
MENT AND OF PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS . . 29 

1. Public demonstration farms 29 

2. Inventories of rural resources 32 

3. Attitude toward the farmer in legislation . . 35 

THE READING HABIT 37 

Rural literature — Need of organization — The li- 
braries — The world outlook. 

V 



ANALYSIS 

PAGE 

HEALTH CONDITIONS IN THE OPEN 

COUNTEY 46 

1. Some of the specific health deficiencies ... 48 
Physical training — Long hours — Cleanness — 
Good air — Ignorance of disease — Diet — Waters 
and wastes — Sanitary houses — Highways — 
Eural diseases. 

2. Some of the remedies for health conditions . . 60 
New kind of dwelling — Inspections — Attitude 

of societies— Farm laborer— The school— Su- 
pervision. 

ORGANIZATION 69 

The farm home is a democracy — The farmer's 
fatalism — The community should prove up — 
The country church— Y. M. C. A. 

FEDERATION OF RURAL FORCES 79 



PART II 

THE SCHOOL AND THE COLLEGE IN 
RELATION TO FARM TRAINING 

(Pages 83-262) 

WHY DO THE BOYS LEAVE THE FARM? . . 89 
Character of the problem — An inquiry of students 
— Letters from those who have left — Questions 
raised by the replies. 

vi 



ANALYSIS 

PAGE 

WHY SOME BOYS AND GIRLS TAKE TO 

FARMING 115 

1. City to country 116 

The nature of the replies — What the letters 
say. 

2. Coiiirtry to country 123 

Replies from farm students — Letters from 
farm-bred students.. 

3. The conclusion 134 



THE COMMON SCHOOLS AND FARMING . . 137 
Responsibility of the school — Educational values. 

1. The question of the equivalency of studies . . 140 
The older order — The newer order. 

2. The nature of the forthcoming school . . . 148 
The four R*s — Agriculture in the schools — 
School to represent the community — The 
high-school — Process of evolution. 

3. A school man 's outlook to the rural school . . 158 

4. The need of a recognized system 166 

Schools and departments in colleges and uni- 
versities — In normal schools — Separate schools 

of agriculture — In secondary schools — Rela- 
tion of the whole. 



THE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND THE 
FARM YOUTH 173 

1. Opinions of students 173 

The students and their replies — Comments on 

the replies. 

2. What is to become of the educated farm 
youth? 180 

vii 



ANALYSIS 

PAGE 

The part played by the college— The part 
played by the farm — Back to the farm — 
Should all the students become farmers? 
3, The summary 193 

COLLEGE MEN AS FAEM MANAGERS . . .195 

1. The problems involved 196 

Outlook of students on the question— Students' 
replies— Winter-course students — Managers are 
not ''hired men." 

2. Can farming pay such salaries? 206 

The economic question — The farm itself has 

a responsibility — The reconstructive movement. 

3. How shall the inexperienced college man 
secure a farm training? 212 

4. Review 217 

THE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND THE 

STATE 219 

Obligation on the part of the people — Different 
kinds of colleges of agriculture. 

1. Scope of a highly developed college of agri- 
culture 226 

Three great lines of work — Crops and live- 
stock — Particular examples of crops and live- 
stock (grass, live-stock, forests, an acre of 
water) — Household subjects — The mechanical 
side — Engineering questions — Farm architec- 
ture — The landscape — Farm management — 
The human problems — Training teachers — 
The outside or extension work — Kinds of ex- 
tension work — Lectures and traveling teach- 
ers—Teaching on farms — Local leaders. 

2. The work is upon us 258 

viii 



THE TEAINING OF FARMERS 



THE TRAINING OF 
FARMERS 



The so-called rural problem is one of 
the great public questions of the day. It 
is the problem of how to develop a rural 
civilization that is permanently satisfying 
and worthy of the best desires. It is a com- 
plex problem, for it involves the whole 
question of making the farms profitable 
(that is, of improving farming methods), 
perfecting the business or trade relations 
of farming people, and developing an ac- 
tive and efficient social structure. 

As the problem is complex, so there is no 
simple or easy solution. The present status 
is, of course, a phase or stage in social evo- 
lution; and the improvement of the condi- 
tion must be a process of further evolution. 

3 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

The existing condition is not inherently bad 
or ineffective, as a whole ; but in some of its 
aspects it is relatively inefficient and un- 
developed as compared with the best urban 
conditions. It is not because the rural 
status may be less or more efficient than 
city conditions, however, that I am inter- 
ested in it, but rather because it is not what 
it is capable of becoming, and is therefore 
in need of improvement. 

The rural problem is being attacked on 
many sides by very many persons. In this 
book, I speak of only one phase of the prob- 
lem,— the means of training the farmer 
himself, both as a craftsman and as a citi- 
zen. From the point of view of the college 
and school I have contributed several ar- 
ticles on the subject to The Century Mag- 
azine. With these articles, I have now 
incorporated others that discuss the same 
general subject, together with much new 
writing, so that the whole may comprise a 
homogeneous statement. I hope that these 
contributions may have more value rather 
than less from the fact that they have been 
separate studies, made at long enough in- 

4 



THE EUEAL PROBLEM 

tervals so that the conclusions have had 
time to season. I have discussed some of 
these questions in ^'The State and the 
Farmer ''; but in the present book I bring 
the subjects together for the purpose of 
showing some of the means now in exis- 
tence whereby farmers may be trained. 
The future will develop other means ; I am 
here speaking of what it is possible and 
practicable to do in the present state of so- 
ciety. 



The Nature of the Problem 

IF the betterment of rural conditions is 
a process of evolution, then all persons 
who are to be concerned in the evolution 
must take active part in it if they are to 
enjoy the benefits of the progress; and I 
like to think that each person will enjoy 
these benefits in about the proportion that 
he actively participates in the work of re- 
construction. That is to say, we all bear a 
natural responsibility, as citizens, to for- 
ward the rural status as well as the urban 
status; and this responsibility rests spe- 
cially on all those who are near the problem 
or are a part of it. The countryman must 
not be one of a re'cipient or receptive class, 
but he must himself promptly help and co- 
operate to solve the rural problems and to 
discharge his full obligations to society. 
This is in large part the theme of the book. 
Even a farm is not a private business in 

6 



THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 

the sense that it should be absolved of re- 
sponsibility to society and be outside all 
regulations in the interest of society. 

The schools and colleges 

Schools, colleges, experiment stations, 
departments and bureaus devoted to agri- 
culture and country life are now many and 
they are increasing. They mark a distinct 
advance in the application of knowledge 
and teaching to the plain daily problems of 
the people. They are rapidly becoming the 
best expressions of the social responsibility 
of government. Their work is free of cost 
to individuals ; and in this fact lies a dan- 
ger, now becoming real, that their benefits 
will be accepted as a matter of course and 
of right, and that the individual will not 
contribute in return as much as he is under 
obligation to contribute or as will make the 
help that he receives of real value to him; 
for I assume that when a person receives 
personal help and encouragement from so- 
ciety (or government) he contracts an ob- 
ligation to aid society and his fellow man. 
The institutions will render the best service 

7 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

when they help persons to help themselves 
and when they stimulate active local initia- 
tive on the part of those with whom they 
deal or work. 

The indigenous forces 

If the countryman is to be trained to the 
greatest advantage, it will not be enough 
merely to bring in things from the outside 
and present them to him. Farming is a 
local business. The farmer stands on the 
land. In a highly developed society, he 
does not sell his farm and move on as soon 
as fertility is in part exhausted. This 
being true, he must be reached in terms of 
his environment. He should be developed 
natively from his own standpoint and 
work ; and all schools, all libraries, and or- 
ganizations of whatever kind that would 
give the most help to the man on the land 
must begin with this point of view. 

I will illustrate this by speaking of the 
current country movement to revive sports 
and games. More games and recreation 
are needed in the country as much as in 
the city. In fact, there may be greater 

8 



THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 

need of tliem in the country than else- 
where. The tendency seems to be just 
now, however, to introduce old folk-games. 
We must remember that folk-games such 
as we are likely to introduce have been de- 
veloped in other countries and in other 
times. They represent the life of other peo- 
ples. To a large extent they are love-mak- 
ing games. They are not adapted in most 
cases to our climate. To introduce them is 
merely to bring in another exotic factor 
and to develop a species of theatricals. 

I would rather use good games that have 
come directly out of the land. Or if new 
games are wanted I should like to try to in- 
vent them, having in mind the real needs of 
a community. I suspect that suggestions 
of many good sports can be found in the 
open country, that might be capable of 
considerable extension and development, 
and be made a means not only of relaxation 
but of real education. We need a broad 
constructive development of rural recrea- 
tion, but it should be evolved out of rural 
conditions and not transplanted from the 
city. 

9 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

Individualism 

We are gradually evolving into a social 
conception of government, by which I mean 
that the inherent rights and welfare of all 
the citizens are to be recognized and safe- 
guarded and that the whole body of citi- 
zens shall work together cooperatively for 
these common ends. Privilege and oppor- 
tunity belong to every man, according to 
his ability and deserts. It is a common 
misapprehension that this gradually ap- 
proaching social stage will eliminate indi- 
vidualism and that its methods will con- 
stitute a leveling process; but individual- 
ism and social solidarity are not at all 
antipodal. 

Individuality and personality are much 
to be desired, and we are under obligation 
to see that they are not lost in our pro- 
gressing civilization. The farmer is the 
individualist. His isolation, and his owner- 
ship of land and of tools, make him so. He 
may lose his individualism when he at- 
tempts to dispose of his product, but he 
nevertheless retains his feeling of individ- 

10 



THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 

uality and independence throughout life. 
He may even resent any inquiry into his 
welfare by government, even though it is 
apparent that the sole purpose of the in- 
quiry is to aid him. We need to preserve 
and even encourage the spirit of independ- 
ence, at the same time that we forward the 
social cohesion and working together of 
farmers on all points of mutual or collec- 
tive interest. The educational and other 
institutions should help to do these two 
things,— to assist the farmer to rely on 
himself and to be resourceful, and to en- 
courage him to work with other farmers 
for the purpose of increasing the profit- 
ableness of farming and of developing a 
good social life in rural communities. 

Not an ^^upliff 

It will be seen at once that this is not at 
all a question of ^^ uplift,'' as this word is 
commonly understood. The rural ques- 
tion is broadly a problem of stimulation, 
redirection, and reconstruction. 

Nor is it, therefore, merely a problem 
of technical agriculture as an occupation, 

11 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

although, of course, the whole rural con- 
dition rests on the agricultural condition. 
All citizenship must rest ultimately on oc- 
cupation, for all good citizens must be 
workers of one kind or another, and there 
must be no parasitic class. The question 
directly concerns all persons who live in 
rural communities, whatever their occupa- 
tion, and it concerns them in all their rela- 
tions,— in relations to church, school, co- 
operation, organization, to politics and all 
public improvement, and in the general 
outlook on life and the attitude toward all 
matters that afPect the general welfare. 

It is not a problem merely of the thinly 
settled farming regions, but of the entire 
country outside distinctly urban influences, 
comprising hamlets, villages, and even 
small cities that sit in an agricultural 
region and are controlled by agricultural 
sentiment. To designate this extra-urban 
realm I have used, for several years, the 
term '^the open country,'^ and this has 
now become current in this semi-technical 
or special signification. 

Considered as a whole, the people 

12 



THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 

of the open country have not yet 
arrived at a conception of a thoroughly 
social or cooperative society. The farm- 
ing people have been obliged— and are 
still obliged— to give too great a pro- 
portion of their thought and energy 
merely to making a living. They have not 
entered on the social phase and they 
scarcely know what it means. They are 
tied to the daily routine both because they 
have not learned how to organize and con- 
duct an agricultural business effectively, 
and because they are preyed upon and sub- 
jugated by interests that control distribu- 
tion, exchange, and markets and that divert 
or exploit the common resources of the 
earth. 

The farmer must be aided in his busi- 
ness of farming, and the artificial hin- 
drances that are not a part of this business 
must be removed or checked by govern- 
ment ; then he must be made to feel that he 
is to give of his time and talent to the com- 
munity. In the largest sense, no person is 
a good citizen, whether in country or town, 
who merely has good character and is pas- 

13 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

sively inoffensive and is a ^^good neigh- 
bor. '^ He must be actively interested in 
the public welfare, and be willing to put 
himself under the guidance of a good local 
leader, if he does not himself attain to 
leadership. 



14 



The Insufficiencies in Country Life 

A FEW months ago I attended a meet- 
ing in one of the best parts of the 
corn-belt, that was called for the purpose of 
discussing the condition of country life 
in that region. The first testimony of 
those who spoke was uniformly to the ef- 
fect that farm life in that part of the world 
was all that could be desired. All farmers 
who had given any worthy attention to 
their business were prosperous, farms were 
paid for, the men had the best of turnouts 
and some of them had automobiles, and 
many of them not only had money in the 
bank but were bank directors or concerned 
in other important business enterprises. 
The farmers were not complaining, and 
town people considered farm land to be a 
good investment. In fact, the farmers 
were so prosperous that they were able to 
move to town at fifty years of age. 

15 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

I asked why they desired to move to 
town. The answer was, to secure good 
school facilities, to escape bad roads and 
isolation, to have church privileges and to 
be able to enjoy social advantages. In other 
words, the country life of the region was 
successful only on its business side, and a 
satisfying rural society had not developed. 
The town was the center of interest. The 
country was not sufficient unto itself as a 
permanent place of abode. 

The better country life 

What I mean by a better country life is 
a rural civilization that meets the needs of 
the twentieth century, and that is able to 
hold the center of one's interest through- 
out life. Primarily, it must be profitable 
in money; but it is not a good civilization 
until it develops good social and educa- 
tional institutions of its own, directly from 
the resident or native forces, and until it 
appeals both to youth and old age because 
of its intrinsic attractiveness and advan- 
tages. A civilization of this kind will be 
the country life of tomorrow. 

16 



THE INSUFFICIENCIES 

Striking insufficiencies 

The most apparent deficiencies are lack 
of effective rural institutions, as of really 
live and progressive social organizations, 
churches and schools; but all these are of 
course dependent on the earning-power of 
the farmer ; and this earning-power is con- 
ditioned on the freedom and fairness with 
which the farmer may conduct his busi- 
ness, as compared with other men. The 
middleman system needs to be overhauled 
and the abuses removed. This ought to 
come about through the operation of a 
public-service commission or similar body. 
Foreign markets should be opened. The 
inequalities of taxation should be evened 
up. The discriminations in transporta- 
tion rates and regulations must be cor- 
rected by the constant oversight of some 
competent authority. Parcels posts and 
postal savings banks must be provided. A 
useful system of agricultural credit and 
banking needs to be worked out. Injus- 
tices in general legislation that bear spe- 
cially heavily on the farmer need to be cor- 
rected. Monopolistic control of streams, 

2 17 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

forests, lands, and other resources must be 
regulated. Good highways and other means 
of communication are to be provided. 
Sanitary conditions are to be studied and 
supervision provided for public health in 
the open country. Intemperance must be 
reduced. The labor and immigration prob- 
lems as they affect agriculture are in great 
need of thorough study. The woman's 
part in farm life must be redirected. The 
scenery attractiveness of the farming coun- 
try should be appreciated, and the land- 
scape features preserved and improved. 
A new rural architecture must be devel- 
oped. There is the greatest necessity for 
a more fundamental, accurate, and under- 
standable knowledge of the processes of 
farming, to the end that a perfectly ra- 
tional agriculture may be developed. The 
countryman of the future must be trained 
for his work. 

I am not to be understood as saying that 
all these shortcomings characterize all agri- 
cultural regions. In some country com- 
munities, they are not marked ; but, on the 
whole, the rural social structure is unde- 

18 



THE INSUFFICIENCIES 

veloped, and even some of the most pros- 
perous or profitable agricultural regions 
are the most barren of social and intellec- 
tual resources. 

How to bring about reconstructive ends 
is now the problem; but it is certain that 
the essentials of the problem are these: 
(1) better knowledge; (2) better educa- 
tion; (3) better and completer organiza- 
tion; (4) quickened social and spiritual 
forces. 

I shall now name some of the public 
agencies that may help to bring about the 
new order. 



19 



PART I 

THE MEANS OF TRAININa 
FARMERS 



The Means of Training Farmees 

The farm home itself is the most impor- 
tant training place for farmers ; but in this 
book I am not considering personal and 
domestic questions. The training of the 
farmer must be largely in the hands of 
government (or society), both because the 
stimulation and direction of persons who 
need stimulation must come from the out- 
side, and because government can com- 
mand the services of leaders and experts. 
Government will not impart information 
alone, but it will set up local organizations 
and institutions to apply the information 
and to set the people to work. 

It is essential that government should 
train farmers because this is the readiest 
and most effective means, in the long run, 
of saving our natural resources, and be- 
cause the rural problem is in the best 
sense a national problem and on its solu- 
tion rests the permanent welfare of society. 

23 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

As a means to these ends, government 
should encourage all voluntary efforts 
of the people of the communities. In 
North America, the governmental activi- 
ties have outrun the organized voluntary 
activities. This is rather remarkable in 
a country in which the theory of gov- 
ernment has been to govern as little as 
possible. Yet it should be explained that 
these governmental activities are not a 
part of ' ^ go vernment ' ^ in the narrow sense 
of official procedure, control, and paternal- 
ism, but are institutions of public better- 
ment maintained by the people. 

The most direct means of training 
farmers is through the schools and col- 
leges of various kinds. There are many 
other means, however, although they may 
not be recognized as such; I propose now 
(in Part I) to enumerate enough of these 
to explain what I mean, and then to pass 
(in Part II) to a fuller discussion of regu- 
lar educational agencies. 

I shall not enter into any argument to 
show that it is necessary to train farmers. 
I presume that there is no disagreement on 

24 



MEANS OF TEAINING FARMERS 

this point. I assume that farmers, as other 
men, must be trained if they are to be 
effective workers in the world. From the 
point of view of society, it is essential that 
farmers be trained in order that the 
fertility of the land— on which the exis- 
tence of mankind depends— shall be safe- 
guarded. Other interests have been the 
beneficiaries of protection and special 
privilege; the training that the farmer re- 
ceives is calculated to develop the man him- 
self rather than to succor and shield his 
business. 



25 



Rural Government 

THE American system of government is 
theoretically a process of self-educa- 
tion. All rural government should produce 
improved conditions of living in country 
communities. Unfortunately, parts of it 
have fallen into the hands of men who seek 
mere personal advantage, and to that ex- 
tent the system has been deflected from an 
organism to serve and develop the people 
into one that serves to place men in power ; 
it has to this degree ceased to be educa- 
tional, and therefore has missed its func- 
tion. 

The subversion of government is spe- 
cially marked in many rural communities, 
where local incentive is often so completely 
stifled by machinery, domination and cus- 
tom that the community is unable to work 
out any real improvement in its condition. 
There is a general lack of any fundamental 

26 



EUEAL GOVERNMENT 

or structural plan to improve the neigh- 
borhood in a broad or effective way. The 
county board of supervisors, or equivalent 
group, for example, is not usually a body 
that is much concerned with any large plans 
for the development of the county as a 
whole ; each supervisor is likely to be chiefly 
concerned to force down the expenses in his 
own township and to put the cost of im- 
provements oif on somebody else. This 
spirit runs through rural government. In 
most cases, such government is dead, as 
compared with what it might be. 

We hear much of boss rule and of graft 
in municipal politics, but it is probable 
that the difficulty is as great in rural poli- 
tics in proportion to the population, to the 
opportunities, and to the stakes that are 
involved. 

The whole country status should be 
brightened up and loosened up, with new 
life put into it. I doubt whether this can 
come about until we evolve different pro- 
cesses in government of rural communities. 
We may even need new schemes of govern- 
ment in these communities. I am not at 

27 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

all sure that the schemes now chiefly in 
vogue are such as are designed to develop 
a new structure of society or to encourage 
the best leadership; they certainly have 
not proved themselves. We are beginning 
to study municipal government; we are in 
equal need of a fundamental reconsidera- 
tion of the way in which rural communities 
may be governed. To this subject I hope 
to return at some future time. 



28 



The Eesponsibility of State Goveknment 
AND OF Public Institutions 

A MODERN government not only ad- 
^ ministers and executes, but it devel- 
ops the business and the welfare of society. 
There is an educational side to government 
that we will recognize more clearly as time 
goes on. Public institutions bear a respon- 
sibility to the community aside from exe- 
cuting their own plans or performing their 
legal functions. I will first illustrate this 
by speaking of the idle farms belonging to 
the public or semi-public institutions. Now 
that we are beginning to recognize the 
very great importance of ^^demonstration 
farms ' ' as means of teaching the best agri- 
cultural practice, the state or institutional 
farms assume a new significance. 

1. PUBLIC DEMONSTRATION FARMS 

i The United States Department of Agri- 
culture, experiment stations, and agri- 

"^ 29 



THE TEAINING OF FARMERS 

cultural colleges are beginning to estab- 
lish demonstration farms to teach the 
people in the localities. Every public in- 
stitution that owns a farm should contrib- 
ute to this movement. There are prison 
farms, asylum farms, almshouse farms, 
and other land properties, comprising 
many thousands of acres and located in all 
parts of the states, that might be local 
teaching agents. It is not enough that 
public farms of this kind be merely well 
farmed (some of them do not even meet 
this requirement) ; they should all be 
demonstration areas, at least in part, to 
exhibit and explain to the communities the 
newer and better facts of agriculture. They 
should have some kind of relation with a 
supervising educational institution, and 
their work should be broadly organized on 
an educational basis. 

We need to go still farther than this. 
There are thousands of good acres of land 
in the states, located directly in the centers 
of the best communities, that are used only 
one week each year and even then perhaps 
with little effect on the betterment of coun- 

30 



RESPONSIBILITY OF GOVERNMENT 

try life. These properties belong to the 
fairs. It is apparent that here is also an 
enormous property and opportunity that 
might be made of direct and continuing 
use to the people of the communities. It 
would be possible in many cases to grow 
experimental crops on certain parts of the 
fair grounds, to be standing in exhibition 
when the fair meets; or if not that, cer- 
tainly the entire grounds could contribute 
to the public good fifty weeks in the year if 
they were carefully laid out with trees and 
shrubs and kept open as exhibition parks. 
All of them could in this way become test 
grounds and recreation grounds. They 
should be tied up to the idea of public bet- 
terment. And the fair itself should be so 
directed as to be an educational enter- 
prise : there is no other reason for holding 
a fair. No country-life institutions are so 
expensive for the length of time that they 
are in service for the public as the fairs. 
We may look for the time when the fairs 
themselves will be more continuous, with 
educational exhibitions given at intervals 
throughout the year when their effect will 

31 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

be greatest. All exhibits should be ex- 
plained by a good teacher. 

An inquiry in an eastern state (not yet 
complete) shows that at least 156 public in- 
stitutions have farms, aggregating more 
than 25,000 acres, and only three of the 
institutions are conducting agricultural 
experiments. Of semi-public institutions, 
twenty-one have farms, with more than 
2,500 acres, but no experiments are con- 
ducted. Two of the institutions that make 
experiments are poor-farms or almshouses 
and one is a state school. Of the sixty-two 
fairs reporting, none conducts tests or ex- 
periments on the grounds. 



2. INVENTOKIES OF KURAL RESOURCES 

The government of the state has a larger 
responsibility to the country problem than 
merely to turn over the rural institutions to 
the general good. It must set constructive 
forces in motion. It must develop the busi- 
ness and welfare of country life. 

32 



EESPONSIBILITY OF GOVEBNMENT 

We must know exactly what our re- 
sources are. We are accustomed to geo- 
logical surveys and to censuses to count 
the voters and make apportionment of 
voting districts. We inventory our min- 
eral resources. But we have no accurate 
knowledge of the soils in the different 
localities, of local climate, the wealth of 
localities in the way of woodlots and small 
streams, the feasibility of developing small 
industries in the communities (and the 
open country needs new industries and new 
interests), no good studies of local mar- 
kets or of the kinds of agriculture that it 
would be best to encourage in any section. 

The central experiment station or col- 
lege engages in the discovery of principles, 
but it may not be able to apply them in 
other parts of the state, because it has no 
specifications of conditions in these parts. 
Neither has the farmer himself any ade- 
quate concept of the conditions, because no 
one has given him the knowledge and no 
one has it to give. We are now passing 
the stage of exploitation in agriculture. 
We are rapidly coming to a time when spe- 

^ 33 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

cial skill must develop on our farms. This 
skill is, of course, conditioned on local 
knowledge. The greatest fundamental need 
in country life is a thorough-going survey 
in detail of our agricultural resources. 
Something is being done in this direction 
by the colleges of agriculture, but it is 
pitiably small when compared with the 
needs. Within such a survey scheme should 
be included, as component parts, all soil 
surveys, orchard surveys, live-stock and 
dairy surveys, and whatever other system- 
atic studies are made of the products, in- 
dustries, people, and institutions of the 
localities. All this geographical know- 
ledge should be mapped and platted. 

An agricultural survey of national scope 
should be set on foot, with all the states 
cooperating. The work should be nation- 
alized under the United States Department 
of Agriculture. A well-analyzed plan 
should be made by a committee of com- 
petent persons representing many regions 
and many lines of study. The scheme hav- 
ing been perfected, the work could proceed 
systematically year after year, each state 

34 



KESPONSIBILITY OF GOVERNMENT 

completing its own field as rapidly as it 
chose. Certain phases or parts of the in- 
vestigation could probably best be carried 
by the national government. The im- 
portant considerations are that the plan 
shall be well studied, the work correlated, 
and the movement progressive. It will be 
only when we collect and compare such 
data that we can hope to take the best steps 
to establish a thoroughly sound country 
life in the localities. 



3. ATTITUDE TOWARD THE FARMER IN 
LEGISLATION 

Because the farmers are not organized, 
their interests are likely to suffer or to be 
overlooked in the making of legislation. I 
will illustrate what I mean by the game- 
law legislation. No type of legislation 
seems to be in a more hopeless or chaotic 
condition than that relating to the pres- 
ervation of small game. Laws are enacted 
that apply to particular localities and not 

35 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

to localities adjacent to them, or that please 
a certain set of sportsmen, or that have 
certain special interests in mind. Now, 
small game is to a large extent a natural 
product of farms. All game is a product 
of the earth. So far as the earth is owned 
for productive purposes, it is controlled by 
the farmer. The general result of game- 
law legislation and agitation is to antag- 
onize the farmer against the sportsman, 
whereas their interests ought to be har- 
monized and unified. There must be funda- 
mental principles on which such legislation 
may rest, and these principles would neces- 
sarily recognize that the farmer has rights 
as well as the sportsman. Laws so made 
would put the farmer and the sportsman 
into sympathy and cause them to work to- 
gether to the betterment of each. 

The reader can extend this observation 
to many other forms of legislation. 



36 



The Reading Habit 

WHAT the farmer reads has great 
influence on his training. The li- 
braries carry a distinct obligation here, 
particularly since traveling libraries and 
rural libraries are being greatly extended. 
To a large extent the effect of library work 
is to cause persons to read for entertain- 
ment. The countryman, however, needs to 
read for courage, that he may overcome 
his fatalism and inertia. Herein is where 
library schemes are likely to be fundamen- 
tally weak, if in fact not radically wrong 
for the countryman. I would not eliminate 
the natural desire of anybody to read for 
entertainment ; but I would make a special 
effort to develop in the countryman a habit 
of reading such things as will give him per- 
sonal mastery over his conditions. 

Rural literature 

There is very little good literature that 
is specially adapted to rural communities 

37 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

except the technical agricultural books and 
bulletins. It is often said that farm homes 
are greatly lacking in books and in maga- 
zines. This is often true. One reason is 
that there is so little literature that is 
really applicable to the farmer's general 
condition and also because his whole train- 
ing -leads him to think in terms of experi- 
ence rather than in terms of books. There 
are many farm homes that are well sup- 
plied with good literature, and the number 
is rapidly increasing. In the old days one 
would be likely to find a copy of ^^ Pilgrim's 
Progress, ' ' the novels of Scott and Dickens, 
a copy of ^'Robinson Crusoe" and other 
books of the earlier order. The Bible is 
found everywhere, but it is too often read 
in the country, as in the city, from the point 
of view of ^' texts'^ and not interpreted in 
terms of present-day life. If I were mak- 
ing out a set of books for reading any- 
where, I should want to include some of 
the modern expositions or adaptations of 
biblical literature in order that the Scrip- 
ture might be made applicable and vital to 
the lives of the people. 

38 



EEADING HABIT 

The novels have no special relation to 
the actual conditions under which the 
farmer lives. I would not advise that all 
reading have relation to the life of the 
present, but some of it certainly should be 
applicable in order that it may have mean- 
ing. We have very few good novels de- 
picting the real farmer. A good many 
farmer characters have been drawn, but 
most of them are caricatures, whether so 
intended or not, and present a type of 
life and a vocabulary which, if they exist 
at all, are greatly the exception. Com- 
mon novels are likely to be exotic. A good 
part of them are read because they are the 
best sellers of the time. 

The bulletins of the experiment stations 
and departments of agriculture are now 
widely distributed ; but they are not read as 
much as they ought to be. This is in part 
because the mailing lists are not selective, 
and in part because the reader may have no 
fundamental knowledge to enable him to 
use them. In many cases the bulletins 
themselves are unreadable and are only 
reference texts. 

39 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

We have practically no good poems of 
American farm life. A poem of the plow- 
boy is very likely to be one that sees the 
plow-boy from the highway rather than 
one that expresses the real sentiment of 
labor on the land. I do not know where 
I can find a dozen first-class poems of 
farming. Farm poems usually are written 
from the study outward, and by persons 
who see farming at long range, or who come 
to it with the city man's point of view. 

The nature books are largely forced and 
lack personality. There are, of course, 
distinct exceptions; but taking the books 
as a whole my experience seems to justify 
this judgment. We need native and sen- 
sible books with country direction in them. 
We need something like the Burroughs 
mode applied to farm operations and farm 
objects. 

Of late the reportorial type of literature 
has forced itself into country-life subjects. 
The reporter discovers a high point here 
and there, does not understand relation- 
ships, writes something that is efferves- 
cent and entertaining and very likely mis- 

40 



READING HABIT 

leading. The ' ^ wonders-of-science ' ' idea 
has also expressed itself in agricultural 
writing, and we are beginning to produce 
a type of literature that is unsafe. Some 
person who is doing good quiet work in 
the improving of crops, or in other agricul- 
tural fields, is likely to be discovered by a 
facile reporter, and his work may be made 
to appear as a sensation. 

We have no history of farm life or farm 
people. I have recently been much im- 
pressed with this lack, when I have been 
trying to find biographical data of a great 
many persons who have had much influence 
in developing good country life in North 
America. The careers of these persons 
do not appear in our standard biographies, 
although persons who may have accom- 
plished much less may be included. The 
result is that no ideal of leadership in 
agricultural or country-life affairs is 
put before the boy or girl. The biogra- 
phies that the youth reads are of persons 
who have made their way in other careers. 
Yet, as a matter of fact, scores of per- 
sons whose names are unknown to the 

41 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

standard books have exerted an influence 
that is truly national in its character. 
These persons should be listed among the 
heroes to whose accomplishments the 
young generation may aspire. 

There are gilded publications that appeal 
to city persons who have an extrinsic in- 
terest in the country, or to those who have 
abundant money to spend; but they exert 
little, if any, influence on the development 
of a native country life. 

The agricultural press is now very exten- 
sive and is contributing to the developing 
of the reading habit, at the same time that 
it spreads information and puts the reader 
in touch with current topics. 

We need a high-class journal of a new 
type that will interest men sympathetically 
and psychologically in farm life, devoting 
only a secondary part of its space to the 
smaller questions of technical farming. 

Another mode of developing the reading 
habit is by means of reading-courses and 
reading-clubs, which are now beginning to 
be organized by the agricultural colleges. 
These are likely to have great influence in 

42 



READING HABIT 

rural communities because (1) they are 
directly related to the life of the people, 
and (2) because they are dynamic or have 
an active follow-up system. 

Need of organization 

Every social or educational organization 
that exists in the open country should be a 
means of developing and spreading the 
reading habit. Local granges should be 
reading centers. The farmers' institutes 
should leave behind them some kind of an 
organization that will continue the work of 
the institute and develop the reading habit. 
All country churches, and all country 
schools, should also be agents in the same 
cause. All these organizations should be 
made distributive centers for good litera- 
ture. They should all aid in distributing 
the bulletins of the experiment station of 
that state. The local library will often be 
able to distribute the experiment station 
bulletins much more effectively than the 
experiment station itself, because the 
library should know the local needs and 
the habits of life of its constituents. 

43 



THE TRAINING OF FAEMERS 

We are much in need of a coordination 
or association of all these various efforts. 
If there is no formal organization as be- 
tween them all, I am sure that there should 
be a cooperative interest between them so 
that they will all work k)gether harmoni- 
ously toward one end. All these agencies 
should be active. They should know what 
other agencies are doing. Each one of 
them should preserve its full autonomy, 
but it will do more concrete work if it 
knows its own field, and will be stimulated 
to greater effort if it knows what other or- 
ganizations are doing. 

The libraries 

There should be a library in every rural 
town. This library should have relation 
to its community, as a school or a church 
has. It should be an educational center. 

The traveling libraries have provided a 
new way of developing the reading habit in 
the country and in remote towns. It un- 
doubtedly has had great influence, although 
I think that the character of its literature 
needs to be reconsidered. 

If libraries and librarians are only a 

44 



READING HABIT 

means of distributing books, all that needs 
to be done is to perfect the machinery or 
the mechanics of the work. If they are to 
energize the people and to redirect the cur- 
rents of local civilization, they must do 
very much more than this. They must in- 
spire the reading habit, direct it, and then 
satisfy it. We need not so much to know 
Just what kind of books to put in the hands 
of readers as to establish a new purpose 
in library effort. It is not enough to sat- 
isfy the demands of readers: we must do 
constructive work by creating new de- 
mands. 

The world outlook 

Of course, I would not limit the country- 
man's view to his own environment. I 
would begin with the things at home, as I 
would begin to teach the child by means of 
what is within its range ; and then I would 
lead out to the world activities. There is 
every reason why a farmer should have as 
broad a view of life and of the things that 
lie beyond as any other man has, but this 
comes as a natural extension of his proper 
education. 

45 



Health Conditions in the Open Country 

IN our approach to country-life ques- 
tions, we have largely overlooked the 
subject of the physical efficiency of country 
people; yet here is a problem of funda- 
mental importance, and attention to it by 
all public agencies becomes at once a 
powerful factor in education. The rural 
districts cannot develop to their greatest 
possibilities until every precaution is taken 
to preserve the health of the resident in- 
habitants. This is nowhere more marked 
than in the necessity of controlling the 
farm-labor supply. The excessive death 
rate among children, which obtains in some 
parts of the country, may be a direct cause 
of scarcity of farm labor. We must also 
develop strong and resistant bodies at 
maturity in order that the real work of the 
farm may be well accomplished. Public 
health is one of our greatest natural re- 
sources, as important to conserve as iron, 

46 



HEALTH CONDITIONS 

coal, or timber. No doubt our greatest 
national loss and waste lies in disease and 
reduced bodily efficiency of the citizens of 
the Kepublic. 

The sanitary condition of the open coun- 
try is also of the greatest importance to 
the city and the town. From the country 
are derived water, milk, and nearly all the 
food consumed in the cities. The condi- 
tion of these supplies is of the greatest con- 
sequence to every person living in an 
urban community. As society becomes 
better organized, every member of it bears 
increasing responsibilities toward the other 
members. Therefore there is a distinct 
brotherhood responsibility on the part of 
the country toward the healthfulness of 
urban regions ; and a no less reciprocal re- 
sponsibility on the part of the city toward 
the country. 

I do not know whether the health condi- 
tions of the country are worse than those 
of the city; I make no comparison what- 
ever as between rural and urban communi- 
ties. I mean only to state what some of 
the country conditions are. 

47 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

1. SOME OF THE SPECIFIC HEALTH 
DEFICIENCIES 

I will mention some of the deficiencies of 
public health in rural districts. In mak- 
ing these remarks I do not have in mind 
merely the question of disease. I wish to 
consider the whole question broadly, to in- 
clude the lack of physical efficiency in what- 
ever way it may be expressed. 

Physical training 

There is a widespread lack of apprecia- 
tion on the part of the farmer of the neces- 
sity of good physical training. He is likely to 
feel that because he leads an outdoor life 
and has muscular exercise, he does not 
need to give attention to physical develop- 
ment. The fact is, however, that the 
farmer is as much in need of * ^ setting-up ' ' 
as any other man. His routine work may 
not contribute to the development of a well- 
proportioned and strong physique. The 
number of ill-formed, broken, lame and im- 
perfectly developed men and women im- 

48 



HEALTH CONDITIONS 

presses this fact. The modern riding ma- 
chinery has not contributed to the physical 
development of the farmer. One has only 
to note the posture of the man as he sits 
on the plow,, the reaper, or the wagon-seat 
to see that this is true. He is likely to. take 
the position of a horseshoe rather than to 
sit upright with straight back and well- 
carried shoulders. We need to give more 
attention to the mode of construction of 
seats on our farm machinery and vehicles. 
The man who follows the plow is very likely 
to fall into a loose and shambling gait, 
with stooped shoulders and an unequal 
poise of the body ; the plow-handles are per- 
haps too low to allow him to stand erect 
and carry himself well. The lack of good 
posture and good carriage (both of which 
contribute greatly to physical efficiency) is 
also marked in most housewives. They 
have not learned how to stand or to walk 
or even how to sit. Directors of gymnasia 
find that country youth usually need a radi- 
cal setting-up, even though they may have 
strong muscles, clear complexions, and 
robust health. If, in addition to these use- 
* 49 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

ful native qualities, the young man or 
young woman could acquire the proper 
physical carriage and development, much 
would be gained toward resisting the de- 
mands of later life. The farmer is likely 
to be careless of his body. 

I do not know whether any careful sta- 
tistics have been made comparing the 
physical development of farm folk with 
other folk. It is not unusual for persons 
of good observation and in full sympathy 
with rural conditions to say to me that the 
physical health and development of farm 
people is lower than of other people of 
comparable position in life, although this 
is contrary to the prevailing opinion. It is 
said that flattened chests, spinal curvature, 
weak arches of the feet, and similar defi- 
ciences, are marked in certain classes of 
students coming largjely from rural dis- 
tricts. It is a current saying that the isola- 
tion drives many farm women insane ; this, 
I think, is an error. If it is true, it affords 
the best possible argument for such an 
educational program as will give the 

50 



HEALTH CONDITIONS 

woman new interests in life; there is no 
doubt about the necessity of the program^ 
from every point of view. 

Long hours 

As a whole, the farm exacts too long- 
hours of work to enable the farmer and his 
wife to develop the best physical resis- 
tance. They become fagged ; they have too 
little time and strength to give to recrea- 
tion, reading, and to intellectual pursuits 
in general, thereby making life exclusively 
physical. A shortening of the hours of 
labor must come about through a general 
reorganization of the farm scheme follow- 
ing the gradual application of science and 
business to the work of the farm. In some 
of the best farming regions, a farmer's 
day does not now average more than about 
nine and one half hours. It is especially nec- 
essary that woman's work be so reorganized 
that she will have time enough and strength 
enough to enable her to take part in some of 
the larger affairs of the community. There 
is no one way whereby the farm work and 

51 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

the housework can be reorganized, but the 
reorganization must come as a matter of 
necessity. 

We are now making the mistake of 
trying merely to improve the present order, 
whereas we need to develop a new point of 
view and to realize that all our systems and 
modes of life must change in order that 
they may be adapted to changing condi- 
tions. At a time when there is a marked 
tendency to shorten the hours of physical 
toil and expand the intellectual opportuni- 
ties, we cannot expect that the farmer will 
be an exception, although his hours can 
never be arbitrarily regulated. 

Cleanness 

Greater attention needs to be given to 
common cleanliness. The whole question 
of sanitation is said to be one of cleanness, 
although this statement is too sweeping. 
I have in mind not only bodily cleanliness, 
but also the general appreciation of the 
importance of tidy and well-kept surround- 
ings. This is fundamefntally a question of 
attitude toward life, but it also has very 

52 



HEALTH CONDITIONS 

distinct special bearing on the spread of 
disease. Whether in city or country, the 
first essential to conditions of good health 
is the elimination of all wastes, the destruc- 
tion of all rubbish and refuse, and the free 
use of water, soap, and disinfectants. 

Many uncleanly personal habits must be 
overcome and banished from rural com- 
munities. In the remoter parts, these 
habits are likely to persist. Perhaps noth- 
ing has done more to challenge attention 
to the essentials of cleanliness than the 
recent agitation for ' ^ clean milk. ' ' A man 
cannot make clean milk without himself 
being clean; and being clean of germs in 
person and in barns, enforces a wholly 
new conception of what cleanliness is. The 
agitation against promiscuous expectora- 
tion should be extended to the country dis- 
tricts, not only for protection against 
tuberculosis but to enforce standards of 
decency. A sensitive civilization cannot 
be developed in a spitting community. 



53 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

Good air 

There is still great need of emphasizing 
the importance of fresh air. It is most 
strange that persons who spend the day 
in the open air are likely to bottle them- 
selves np at night. I suppose that the 
fear of fresh air is in part expressive of 
our general philosophy of life, whereby we 
unconsciously carry the idea that man is in 
warfare with nature. We shut our doors 
to nature. Our windows are small and 
cramped, as if we only grudgingly let in the 
out-of-doors. Before we knew the nature 
of contagious disease, it was very natural 
that we should consider the atmosphere to 
be responsible for all kinds of insidious 
enemies. Disease was supposed to be due 
to some effluence or miasma, and we shut 
our doors to it. Now that we are able to 
distinguish the effects of air from mosqui- 
toes, flies, and germs, we should begin to 
discriminate in our habits. The best civili- 
zation will come when we put ourselves in 
sympathetic attitude toward nature, rather 
than when we antagonize it; and we shall 

54 



HEALTH CONDITIONS 

learn what things are noxious and take 
means to avoid them. The spread of tu- 
berculosis in northern regions in former 
time was due not so much to the fact that 
winters were cold as to the battening up of 
doors and windows. Sometime we shall 
learn how to warm our houses and at the 
same time supply them with clean air. 

Ignorance of disease 

There is still widespread ignorance of 
the nature of contagious disease. There 
are those who think that a swale or an 
overflowed stream is in itself a source of 
disease. The result is, in some parts of 
the country, that there is too much visiting 
in case of contagious disease; or persons 
may have a white fear of all sickness that 
they cannot understand and thereby avoid 
the sufferer and leave him without suffi- 
cient care. 

The lack of knowledge of the nature of 
disease and 'the difficulty of securing a phy- 
sician quickly, no doubt contribute largely 
to the use of what are called patent medi- 
cines. I would not condemn all proprie- 

55 



THE TKAINING OF FARMEES 

tary remedies ; but it is really a marvelous 
thing what faith we have in the label on 
the bottle. It is a curious psychological 
state. Without knowing what ails him or 
what the bottle contains, if only the label 
is reassuring, the man puts the contents 
into his stomach. He asks no questions; 
he takes no advice. I do not know of any 
other habit that exhibits such supreme 
faith; and the signs on the fences and 
barns show that our faith still abides. 

We need to appreciate the nature of our 
dependence on domestic animals. This re- 
lationship has its sanitary bearings. A 
number of the animal diseases are trans- 
missible to man. A healthy herd goes far 
toward insuring a healthy family; and the 
habit that develops good health in animals 
is likely also to develop good health in 
human beings. 

Diet 

In many families the diet is monotonous, 
innutritions, and poorly prepared. It is 
not such as to develop strong and resistant 
bodies. There are some geographical 

56 



HEALTH CONDITIONS 

regions in which this deficiency is marked. 
We are beginning to feed our cattle directly 
for milk-production or beef-production, 
that is, for efficiency. We ought also to 
begin to feed ourselves for efficiency. What- 
ever is said of the country cooking, how- 
ever, it has the transcendent merit of being 
honest; it is just what it pretends to be. 
The most artistic fabrications (with music) 
may be compounded in the victuals that one 
finds at the polite hotels and restaurants. 

Waters and wastes 

The general dependence on wells has an 
important bearing on health in the open 
country. We all know what dangers are 
likely to overtake the well, unless it is very 
carefully safeguarded. The spring may 
be safer or it may not, depending on cir- 
cumstances. The point is that we need to 
give increased attention to the guarding of 
our water supplies, whatever their source. 

The greatest care must be taken to re- 
move the wastes. Perhaps there is no 
single deficiency in country life that is 
more marked than this. Soil-pollution and 



57 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

water-pollution are responsible for a num- 
ber of our most widespread and danger- 
ous diseases. Typhoid fever is one; the 
hook-worm disease of the South is another. 

Sanitary houses 

There are very few sanitary dwellings. 
This is true of country and city alike. We 
have builded houses for protection and to 
cover our household gods, but we have 
given very little attention to building houses 
for health. Fresh air, sunlight, water sup- 
plies, removal of wastes, the saving of 
steps and of useless effort, cleanliness, 
cheerfulness, restfulness, must all be con- 
sidered in a residence that is really good to 
live in. 

Highways 

The lack of good highways has its public 
health significance. It is difficult to secure 
expeditious medical and surgical service 
in many parts of the country because of the 
lack of traversable roads. It is natural 
that the physician or surgeon should dread 
such roads. This lack of service is likely 

58 



HEALTH CONDITIONS 

to increase the countryman ^s confidence in 
the medicine bottle, and also the depend- 
ence on the midwife who in many cases 
may not be too cleanly or too well informed 
and the results of whose practice may not 
at once be apparent. 

Rural diseases 

A number of important diseases are 
mostly rural and need to be given special 
attention by those who are interested in 
country-life affairs. Typhoid fever is es- 
sentially a rural disease in its origin ; so is 
malaria. Perhaps the most remarkable 
example now before the public is the hook- 
worm disease of the South, to which I have 
already referred, and which is said to in- 
volve four million people. The parasite 
that produces this disease has been termed 
^^the germ of laziness. '' It is quite hope- 
less to rely only on teaching and preaching 
with persons who are ill with hook-worm; 
they need medical attendance. 



59 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

2. SOME OF THE REMEDIES FOR HEALTH 
CONDITIONS 

My first observation is that it is natural 
to be healthy. I do not know whether most 
of us have discovered this fact. We have 
put the emphasis on disease. We have 
thought sickness to be a kind of judgment 
or punishment, as if we were all doing 
penance in this world. When we meet a 
friend, we say ^ ^ I hope you are well : ' ' the 
presumption is that he is sick, but we still 
have hopes that he may have escaped. We 
must overcome the notion that disease is an 
act of Providence. There seems to be a 
widespread belief that the organs of the 
human body tend to go wrong and that 
therefore they must be regulated; so we 
have liver regulators, stomach regulators, 
nerve regulators, and others. We are begin- 
ning to place the emphasis on sanitation 
rather than on disease. It is natural for a 
fruit-tree to bear : it is our business to re- 
move the obstacles to its bearing; it is 
natural for human beings to be healthy : it 

60 



HEALTH CONDITIONS 

is our part to remove the obstacles. We 
now have colleges of medicine and of dis- 
ease, but we shall sometime have colleges 
of health. The mental attitude toward 
health and disease is the first thing to be 
considered. To a great extent, our state 
of mind determines the bodily functions 
and controls the progress of disease. This 
is well illustrated in the undoubted success 
of many of the systems of faith cure. We 
must arrive at a sense of mastery over our- 
selves. 

New kind of dwelling 

We must have a new kind of country 
residence. Every building should be 
adapted to its place and its uses, and it 
should be built as largely as possible of 
native and local material. Many a farm- 
er's wife has worn herself out by going up- 
stairs and downstairs and traveling through 
intermediate rooms, when a different plan 
of the building might have placed the 
kitchen and dining-room and the supplies 
within easy reach. Water must be taken 
into the house and all wastes must be taken 

61 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

out and safely disposed of. It is not diffi- 
cult to supply water to a farm residence. 
It can be supplied from springs, pumped 
by windmills or gas engines, syphoned 
from wells on higher land, provided from 
roof water stored in attics, or by the pres- 
sure-tank system. The time will soon come 
when every first-class farm home will be 
supplied with these essentials. It is the 
part of the colleges of agriculture to intro- 
duce a new rural architecture. 

I know it is difficult to overcome the prej- 
udice, but I think that I have the solution 
to the question : I advise country girls not 
to accept the proposal of any young man 
until he promises to provide the house with 
water supplies and a sanitary kitchen. The 
question could be settled in ten years. 

Inspections 

Rural manufacturing establishments that 
prepare food must be inspected, not only 
as to the honesty of the product but as 
to its wholesomeness and healthfulness. 
Creameries, cheese factories, canning fac- 
tories, and others are of this kind. Of late 

62 



HEALTH CONDITIONS 

years the practice has developed of inspec- 
tion of dairies and creameries by city 
boards of health. The city considers this 
to be necessary in order to protect its 
people. The city inspector, however, is 
likely not to understand the practical con- 
ditions under which the farmer works, and 
antagonism often arises between the city 
officers and the producers. It is really not 
a city function to inspect dairies and 
creameries. It is a state function. This 
work should be performed by a state de- 
partment or state college or some similar 
institution that is entirely unpartisan and 
non-political and that is thoroughly con- 
versant with farm conditions and in sym- 
pathy with the farmer as well as the con- 
sumer. 

Greater attention needs to be given to 
local slaughter-houses. Many of them are 
not only an offense to the community but 
present most unsanitary conditions through 
the feeding of the offal to swine, and other 
practices. 



63 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

Attitude of societies 

The regular rural societies and organi- 
zations should now begin to discuss public- 
health questions in the same spirit in which 
they are accustomed to consider purely 
agricultural questions. The wide-awake 
physician should be interested in these sub- 
jects, and the sanitary engineer and others 
should have a modern and rational point 
of view on the question of good health and 
physical development. It is especially im- 
portant that women's clubs take up this 
kind of work energetically, and they have 
done this in many places. 

The rural organizations carry a respon- 
sibility in the training of farmers in other 
than the technical agricultural relations. 

Farm laborer 

We must develop a new attitude, at least 
in some parts of the country, toward the 
laboring man. We must regard him not 
only as a fellow man, but we need also to 
see that he does not become a spreader of 
disease and thereby a menace to the com- 

64 



HEALTH CONDITIONS 

munity. No doubt a part of the typhoid 
fever is due to cases of ' ^ walking typhoid ' ' ; 
and the danger of the spread of tubercu- 
losis and other diseases by means of poorly 
housed, unguided and transient farm labor 
is by no means inconsiderable. 

The school 

Of course, the school has a responsibility 
to public health, for good health is mostly 
a direct question of teaching. The school 
should teach persons how to live. This 
means that every pupil who has had any 
school training should have some kind of 
an idea of the bodily functions and their 
control, and how and what to eat. It is 
less important to teach physiology as ordi- 
narily understood than to teach hygiene. 
It is the part of the schools to correct and 
eliminate the mock sentiment that now 
precludes an understanding of the natural 
functions of the human body. The lack of 
discussion and rational knowledge of these 
subjects contributes directly not only to 
physical inefficiency but to a coarse vul- 
garity. It is a good suggestion recently 

5 65 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

made that one week of each year be given 
over in the schools to the discussion of 
health and sanitation, this period to be 
called a '^Health Week/' 

Supervision 

I may summarize these suggestions by 
saying that every one of us carries a nat- 
ural responsibility to develop good pub- 
lic health. We are all under obligation to 
see that society is effective, and it cannot 
be effective without strong and smoothly 
working bodies. We must develop a new 
spirit toward the isolated and the disad- 
vantaged man. This spirit would have 
great results in the training of rural people. 

Government must interest itself in health 
as well as in other social and economic 
questions. The federal government has no 
legal right or power to investigate human 
diseases in any of the sovereign states, ex- 
cept at quarantine stations, although it 
may freely investigate the diseases of 
chickens, cattle, and pigs. Certain sani- 
tary questions are so important and wide- 
spread that they become national rather 



HEALTH CONDITIONS 

than state problems. One of these is the 
hook-worm disease of the South, mentioned 
before. If society has a right to compel 
persons to go to school, it has an equal 
moral right to compel them to be healthy. 
We concede the right of government of 
calling men out to war. It is a marvelous 
thing that the mass of mankind will allow 
itself to be driven to slaughter. I am won- 
dering whether the time will not come when 
it will allow itself to be driven to life and 
health. Society now has a right to kill, but 
it has not an equal right to make well. The 
last right that a man surrenders is the 
right to be sick. 

We must establish a better regulation of 
health in the open country. City boards of 
health are continuously in operation and 
usually they are effective. If the open 
country has a board of health, it is usually 
operative only when some epidemic or 
other dire necessity arises. A thorough- 
going health organization for the open 
country is as important as similar organ- 
izations for the city, and it is to the inter- 
est of society and of each of us to see that 

67 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

such a provision comes about. This regu- 
lation must be both state and local ; and the 
work should be nationalized by the estab- 
lishment of public-health work on a worthy- 
basis at Washington, and by a widespread 
educational propaganda. 



68 



Organization 

FARMEES have not yet learned how to 
work together effectively. They have 
numberless organizations, but there is a 
lack of good ^ ' team work. ' ^ The very indi- 
vidualism of the man makes him either 
suspicious of other men or undesirous of 
working with them. The farmers in any 
region are engaged mostly in the same 
kind of farming, and they regard them- 
selves as competitors rather than coopera- 
tors. It is now beginning to appear that 
it is usually more profitable for a farmer 
to grow the same crops that his neighbors 
do, for the community comes to have a 
reputation for certain products and it at- 
tracts buyers and bidders ; better transpor- 
tation rates and facilities are secured ; and 
the common interest brings expert know- 
ledge into the community. The immediate 
region, rather than the separate man, 
should be conceived of as an economic unit. 

69 



THE TRAINING OF FAEMERS 

When firmly united on correct principles, 
a community of farmers can accomplish 
anything within reason in the regulation 
of production, labor, markets, schools, 
churches, and general betterment. They 
should seldom organize merely to oppose or 
expose the existing conditions, even though 
these conditions are bad, but gradually, by 
careful study and systematic action, to 
bring a new condition out of the old. 

The educational results of organized ef- 
fort must not be overlooked. Many boys 
and girls have been put in the way of im- 
proving themselves by the local grange, 
pomological society, or other club or so- 
ciety. 

Organized effort becomes an active 
means of real training of farmers, a kind 
of community school. There are localities 
in which organizations of one kind or an- 
other have transformed the life of the 
region. 

The farm home is a democracy 

The farmer really has the very best 
school in cooperative democracy in his own 

70 



ORGANIZATION 

farming, if his business is properly con- 
ducted. All members of the family are 
workers. The home is so much a part of 
the farm that one is not sold without the 
other. If the boys and girls are given a 
share-interest in a good farm (and allowed 
to keep it), they usually like the business 
and stay on the farm. The same principle 
might be applied to the community. 

Inasmuch as the city, speaking broadly, 
has not yet solved the problem of perma- 
nently providing a growing population, the 
farm home assumes a most important rela- 
tion to civilization. It is charged with the 
duty not only of maintaining the open coun- 
try but of contributing population to the 
city. The farm home also carries an 
obligation to maintain the quality of the 
population. It is a preservator of morals, 
and it is well, therefore, that the farming 
people is conservative. I hope that the 
country folk realize these responsibilities. 

The farmer's fatalism 

Experience in working together has its 
psychological results. The real country- 

71 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

man is likely to be a fatalist, althonigh he 
may not know it and he may resent it if 
told. His work is in the presence of the 
elemental forces of nature. These forces 
are beyond his power to make or to un- 
make. He cannot change the rain or sun- 
shine or storm or drought. The result of 
this is that the man may either develop a 
complacent and joyful resignation, taking- 
things as they come and making the best 
of them, or else a species of rebellion that 
leads to a hopeless and pessimistic outlook 
on life. I am convinced that much of the in- 
ertia of country people is traceable to the 
essential fatalism of their outlook on the 
world. 

This outlook of helplessness is to be 
overcome by giving the man the power and 
courage of science, whereby he may in some 
degree overcome, control, or mitigate the 
forces of nature, or at least effectively ad- 
just himself to them ; and by securing the 
impulse of collected action. 

Agricultural colleges, experiment sta- 
tions, and other institutions are giving the 
countryman no end of fact. We have not 

72 



/ 



OEGANIZATION 

yet organized this fact into such a philos- 
ophy of application, however, as to give the 
countryman full confidence in his ability to 
contend with his native conditions. The 
new knowledge that the farmer acquires is 
likely to be held as a mere passive posses- 
sion ; it does not work itself out into action 
as it would in the case of men who are or- 
ganized to accomplish definite results. An 
organized community is one in which the 
new knowledge and appliances are put into 

use. 

I 

The community should prove up 

Eural societies can accomplish much for 
the community by putting up money to 
have special investigations made of the lo- 
cal or special problems. A society of gin- 
seng growers recently made a purse to call 
in a plant pathologist to make investiga- 
tions of ginseng diseases. This illustrates 
a very important principle: the college of 
agriculture or the experiment station of 
the state cannot find the funds to meet all 
the difficulties in the state, and the people 
should be willing to contribute money for 

73 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

the solution of the problems of their special 
business or region (page 6). It is no 
doubt the part of the institution or of far- 
mers' institutes or other agencies to set 
backward neighborhoods into action, but it 
does not follow that the institution should 
forever carry the neighborhood or indus- 
try. As a neighborhood becomes pros- 
perous, it should be glad to help those who 
are less fortunate. The farmer has been 
so long accustomed to saving that it is hard 
for him to acquire the habit of giving. 

If a stock-growing community is per- 
plexed by a feeding problem or a pear- 
growing community is injured by the 
pear-blight, let the people unite and call the 
best advice. If investigations are needed 
that the college or experiment station can- 
not undertake, let the people collect a purse 
of say $600 a year for two or three years 
and have the institution send a special post- 
graduate or advanced student into the re- 
gion to work the problem out under the 
immediate direction of the college author- 
ities. This would give the locality the 
benefit of the most expert help at the mini- 

74 



ORGANIZATION 

mum cost, and it might be helping a needy 
and worthy student at the same time; in 
this way, the locality could have the dis- 
tinction and satisfaction of maintaining 
what would be practically a scholarship or 
fellowship, and the people would become 
active cooperators in the public work of 
the state. In very many cases this method 
would be far better than the common prac- 
tice of running to the legislature for every 
difficulty, and it would eliminate the neces- 
sity of depending for betterment work on 
the politician and office-holder. It would 
strongly develop the ability of self-gov- 
ernment. 

It does not follow, because a county fair, 
a farmers' club or a shipping association 
asks the college of agriculture or experi- 
ment station to send exhibits or a lecturer 
or an investigator, that the institution is 
under obligation to do so. It may be quite 
as important that the local organization 
^ ^ prove up, ' ' show that it deserves the help, 
that it will take pains to cooperate and to 
execute the work. I have known many 
cases in which the people in the locality sit 

75 



THE TRAINING OF FAEMERS 

idly by or look on in curiosity while investi- 
gators work hard to throw light on a local 
problem; and I have gone back into the 
community years after to find the same 
difficulties and to hear the same questions 
as to cause and remedy. This is not fair. 

The country church 

It is not only a question of making new 
organizations, but quite as much of re- 
directing old ones. The country church is 
one of the organizations that need to enter 
new fields, or, perhaps better, to do some 
of their work in a new way. All of us and all 
organizations bear responsibility to soci- 
ety, the church as much as any and perhaps 
more than any. Rev. S. W. Pratt, in Al- 
legany County, N. Y., suggests that ^^a 
country church might organize a Farmers' 
Brotherhood to good advantage.'' There 
are many country churches that are carry- 
ing this responsibility. The system of 
cooperative creameries in Minnesota grew 
out of an organization at Clark's Grove, 
and this parent organization came out of 
the local church. 

76 



ORGANIZATION 

The country church has a much larger 
responsibility, and, therefore, a much 
larger opportunity than the public in gen- 
eral has realized. If it once recognizes its 
social responsibility to its community, it 
will exercise an even more powerful influ- 
ence than it does at present, and will be 
one of the very important factors in our 
rural progress. In many places the rural 
church has practically died out. In other 
places it is very weak. Many persons have 
felt that the usefulness of the country 
church is passing. This may be true to 
some degree if the church is to hold merely 
to the kind of work that has been done in the 
past ; but the best outlook is that which would 
reorganize the church, wherever necessary, 
into a much more energetic engine for the 
public good. The country saloon is open 
continually. The country church ought 
also to be open continually, or at least it 
ought to have a continual personal contact 
with its people; and this contact must be 
much more than through customary reli- 
gious work. 



77 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

Young Men^s Christian Association 

A typical example of the application of 
organized effort in rural problems, is the 
new ^^ county work'' of the Young Men's 
Christian Association. A rural county, 
rather than a city or town, becomes the unit 
of organization, with minor divisions and 
leaders. The motive of the work is to de- 
velop local leadership and imagination in 
all ways that will permanently help the 
young men in the localities. We may ex- 
pect to see this new movement become one 
of the recognized agencies of constructive 
rural development. 



78 



Federation of Kural Forces 

IT is possible for all the foregoing 
agencies, and many others, to be organ- 
ized into one or more federations and to be 
united in a general campaign for rural 
progress. One of the earliest writers and 
workers in the federating of rural organi- 
zations in a comprehensive way was Kenyon 
L. Butterfield, now president of the Massa- 
chusetts Agricultural College. Following 
his suggestion, the New England Confer- 
ence on Rural Progress was organized in 
1907. The organization idea, as a force in 
rural betterment, is well expressed in his 
book, ^^ Chapters in Rural Progress.'* 

A successful campaign must come as the 
result of the uniting or working together 
of all rural forces within given regions. 
We already have the beginnings of enough 
institutions and of sufficient forces to recon- 
struct our rural civilization if only they are 

79 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

well supported and if they cooperate genu- 
inely for the general good. This coopera- 
tion can come about in such a way as not to 
interfere with the essential autonomy of 
any institution or organization, while at 
the same time it ties them all together into 
one broad and common effort. The respon- 
sible heads of all existing rural agencies 
and movements in any state should consti- 
tute a kind of consulting board to stimulate 
and direct country-life work. It should be 
important to combine small agencies into 
state and national federations, when per- 
sons of wise leadership can be found, 
who are free from partisanship and per- 
sonal ambition. Such movements should 
be intrusted only to persons who see the 
whole problem of rural life. 

Movements of national importance must 
be carried through to a finish by some 
responsible agency. If the middleman sys- 
tem is to be regulated, some one must take 
the lead and be supported by the forces 
representing rural affairs. If the church is 
to take a new hold on country people, the 
movement should be nationalized under 

80 



FEDERATION 

good leadership. If the general welfare of 
a certain region is to be considered with 
any effect, some kind of organization must 
take up the work and bring the people to- 
gether; this is what the New England 
Conference on Rural Progress aims to ac- 
complish. In every state or region some 
such open organization should stand in a 
large way for the working together of all 
other organizations so far as they touch 
public rural questions. 

Reforms and progress are not to be 
brought about by abuse of the present con- 
ditions or by a process of muck-raking. 
The work must be shaped up in a construc- 
tive way and put through by a body that is 
beyond reproach and that has fairly defi- 
nite aims. 

The greatest function of a Commission 
on Country Life would be the handling of 
such questions as these. A national 
Commission is much needed to serve as a 
clearing-house on rural problems, as an 
organ through which the people can ex- 
press themselves, and as an agency to 
study the whole situation. 

6 81 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

We are just now in need of a National 
Conference on Rural Progress, associating 
the ablest men and women, for the purpose 
of laying all these questions before the 
public. Such a conference would crystal- 
lize the slowly forming movement toward 
state and national unity in rural affairs. 



82 



PAET II 

THE SCHOOL AND THE COLLEGE 

IN RELATION TO FARM 

TRAINING 



4 



The School and the College in Relation 
TO Farm Training 

The special emphasis of this book lies on 
the relation of the school and college to the 
training of farmers : I shall therefore enter 
into this subject in greater detail. 

The American movement to reach the 
last man on the land originated in a chain 
of colleges of agriculture. The present 
institutions in the United States are 
founded on the Land-grant Act of 1862 and 
on subsequent acts, one college in each 
state and territory ^ ^ to promote the liberal 
and practical education of the industrial 
classes in the several pursuits and pro- 
fessions of life.'^ These institutions 
'^ teach such branches of learning as are 
related to agriculture and the mechanic 
arts. ' ^ There are agricultural institutions 
of similar scope in Canada. 
I These colleges are reinforced by a chain 
of experiment stations, founded on the 
^ federal grant of 1887 and a subsequent act. 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

Practically all of these stations are con- 
nected with the Land-grant colleges. 

^"~ Official departments of agriculture, rep- 
resenting several types of organization, 
have been established in most of the states. 
These departments or bureaus represent 
the police powers of the state in respect to 
agricultural matters, or become offices for 
the advertising of the agricultural possi- 
bilities of the commonwealth, or they do 
certain educational work, as the holding of 
institutes or the giving of instruction to 
dairymen. For the most part, they do not 
represent high types of governmental or- 
ganization or efficiency. They should be 
strongly capable, however, of training the 

I people in legal and governmental affairs as 
these matters apply to rural conditions. 

The United States Department of Agri- 
culture represents the interest of the fed- 
eral government in agricultural affairs. It 
has recently grown immensely in extent 
and influence, and has become one of the 
great coordinate executive departments of 
government. Much of its work is educa- 
tional, and therefore it may be considered 

86 



SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 

to be one of the institutions that are con- 
tributing powerfully to the training of 
farmers. 

These three types of effort,— colleges, 
experiment stations, departments of agri- 
culture—constitute the recognized Amer- 
ican system of reaching the rural problem. 
Great numbers of other educational 
agencies are contributing much to the 
solution of the same problem, but they 
are not a part of the regular public ma- 
chinery. In this book, no effort is made 
to discuss the experiment stations and the 
departments of agriculture: attention is 
given to some phases of the college work, 
since it is the chief function of these insti- 
tutions to train farmers.^ 

The colleges alone cannot solve the prob- 
lem of developing a better country life. 
The school training is more important 
than the college training ; yet the schools 
have really not entered the field of train- 
ing the farmer. There is universal demand 

1 1 have made a discussion of the history and scope of 
these colleges in Vol. iv of the Cyclopedia of American 
Agriculture. 

87 



THE TKAINING OF FAEMERS 

that they relate themselves to this kind of 
work, and many beginnings have been 
made. Naturally, these beginnings are an 
adaptation of present school methods to 
agricultural subjects; but the outcome, if 
they meet the situation, will be a wholly 
new or different type of school effort. In 
other words, the agricultural and other 
industrial teaching will eventually redirect 
the schools, so that we shall have a new 
conception of what schooling and educa- 
tion is, or should be. 

In approaching these educational ques- 
tions, we may first ask why some boys and 
girls leave the farm and why others take to 
farming, in order that we may have before 
us some of the influences that are to be cor- 
rected or encouraged. We may then ask 
what the schools are doing to help the situ- 
ation. Then we may consider the influence 
of the college of agriculture on country 
youth, and thereafter discuss college men 
as farm managers. Finally, we may dis- 
cuss the general relation of the college of 
agriculture to the state. 



88 



Why Do the Boys Leave the Fakm? 

THERE are several ways of attempting 
to answer the question why the young 
folks leave the farm for other occupations 
or professions. The commonest way is to 
give probable reasons drawn from general 
observation of farm conditions. The ob- 
server can readily see many unattractive 
features of farm life that he supposes 
might influence the young. Another 
method is that of the advocate or propa- 
gandist, who is likely to fix his attention 
on one discouraging feature and to make 
it the motive force in the exodus from coun- 
try to city. He may see this cause in some 
governmental or other disability, which 
he conceives to press with particular 
hardship on the farmer, and which he de- 
sires to correct or reform. A third method 
is to ask persons who have joined in this 
exodus why they have done so. This is the 

89 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

natural and scientific method, but because 
of the difficulty of reaching these persons, 
this method seems not to have been em- 
ployed to any useful extent. It is this 
direct method and its results that I pur- 
pose now to discuss. 

Character of the problem 

It is difficult to choose the persons of 
whom one may inquire in hope of securing 
usable information. Persons in middle life 
who are now deeply immersed in affairs 
are too far away from the farm to be 
trusted to give an account of the motives 
that guided them in their youthful choice; 
I have usually found that such persons are 
likely unconsciously to color their replies 
by the experience of subsequent years. 
Those who work at day labor have usually 
drifted away from the farm rather than 
purposely left it, and their ideas commonly 
lack definiteness ; and, moreover, these per- 
sons are laborers rather than farmers, and 
their case does not greatly influence the 
larger agricultural and social questions. I 
have therefore chosen to inquire of stu- 

90 



WHY BOYS LEAVE FARM 

dents, for they leave the farm, if at all, 
with a definite purpose, and they are still 
near the point of their departure. 

Before taking up the details of my in- 
vestigation, I should say, perhaps, that 
such an inquiry is well worth making 
wholly aside from its bearing on technical 
agricultural questions. In its larger 
phases, the problem is both an economic 
and a social question. A migration city- 
ward imposes problems of addition on the 
city as well as problems of subtraction on 
the country. It has a direct relation to 
all general questions of population. It 
seriously affects land values, and, there- 
fore, other values. It has an important 
bearing on the vital problem as to where 
our people shall be bred. I have elsewhere 
tried to show (''The Outlook to Nature'') 
that farmers constitute the chief nature- 
bred class of men now remaining to us, and 
this fact cannot help having a far-reaching 
effect on the character of future popula- 
tions. 

I am not now discussing the question as 
to whether there is, in fact, a general exo- 

91 



THE TRAINING OF FAEMEES 

diis from farm to town, but am only con- 
sidering specific instances; nor am I 
assuming that because a person is born on 
a farm he should therefore remain on a 
farm. Many persons have left the farm, 
and we may ask them why they have gone. 

An inquiry of students 

In 1904-5, I addressed a circular letter 
to all students in Cornell University out- 
side the College of Agriculture who, I had 
reason to believe, were born in the country, 
asking (1) whether the person were reared 
on a farm, (2) where, (3) whether he in- 
tended following some other business than 
farming, and why. I also addressed a let- 
ter to the nearly 400 students then in the 
College of Agriculture of Cornell Univer- 
sity, asking similar questions, and inquiring 
why they desire to pursue agricultural 
occupations. In all cases I asked for first- 
hand personal reasons, and, in order that 
the respondent might not be embarrassed, 
I promised not to make the names public. 

The replies fall chiefly into four groups : 
(1) persons reared on the farm, but now 

92 



WHY BOYS LEAVE FARM 

planning to leave it; (2) persons born in 
towns or cities, and purposing to remain 
in them; (3) those bred in towns or cities, 
and planning to go to the farm; (4) those 
raised on farms, and expecting to remain 
there. We may now discuss those who 
plan to leave the farm. 

I make no attempt to discuss the merits 
and demerits of farm life, or to place 
values on the replies, or to enter the 
tempting field of discussion of the psycho- 
logical aspects of the cases. I mean to put 
before the reader only the reasons that 
these earnest young persons think to be 
the ones that have determined their choice 
of careers. 

Of course these replies in this chapter 
are against the farm. They comprise a 
series of vigorous indictments against the 
business of farming by persons who have 
known the business; for nearly all these 
persons were born and reared on farms, 
and the few others have lived on farms long 
enough to make them essentially farm boys. 

In this farm-exodus class I have 155 re- 
plies. Although the number of respondents 

93 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

is not great enough to warrant statistical 
conclusions,— I am not making a scientific 
investigation,— yet they probably state the 
larger part of the reasons that a much 
greater number of similar persons would 
allege. These replies come largely from 
New York, but those from other states, 
chiefly in the West, are the same in tenor. 
Most of the respondents give more than 
one reason for planning to leave the farm. 
These reasons I have roughly classified be- 
low. It will be seen that the predominant 
reason is that farming does not pay in 
money, and other reasons are that the 
physical labor is too great and the social 
advantages are too small ; but I prefer not 
to comment. The figures give the number 
of persons who allege the different reasons : 



The question of financial reward 

Farming does not pay ; no money in the busi- 
ness 62 

Difficult to acquire a farm without a start . 10 
Farming requires too much capital .... 5 

94 



WHY BOYS LEAVE FARM 

Discouraged by the fact that farms are mort- 
gaged 5 

Farmer cannot control prices 2 

The farmer buys high and sells low .... 1 

High taxes near the city 1 

Expect to farm some day, after making 
money in some other business . . . . .15 



The question of physical labor 

Too much hard work 26 

Hours too long 17 

Work too monotonous 11 

Farming is drudgery 8 

Work is unattractive and uncongenial ... 6 

The work is not intellectual 6 

No machinery can perform the hard work of 

the farm 2 

The work is too hard in old age 1 

The farmer is too tired to enjoy reading . . 1 



The social and intellectual ideals 

No social advantages or activities .... 26 
More opportunity for advancement elsewhere 14 
The farmer cannot be known in the world . . 5 
Life is monotonous 4 

95 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

The social and intellectual ideals (continued) 

The life is confining ; no freedom 4 

The association is with uncultivated people . 3 

The occupation is too narrow 3 

The farm is isolated 3 

Women are overworked on the farm .... 3 

Farming is physical labor only 2 

People have a low regard for the farmer . . 2 

No higher and nobler achievement possible . 2 

No high ideals in farming 1 

Education gave higher ideals and needs . . 1 

College training unfits for farm work ... 1 

Farmer cannot serve humanity 1 

Farming has little excitement 1 

Has come to know the city and likes it ... 1 

Farmer has no political advantages .... 1 



Miscellaneous handicaps 

Natural bent elsewhere 24 

Parental influence against farming .... 6 

Teacher influenced against it 1 

Father was unsuccessful 2 

The home was unpleasant 2 

Health not sufficient for the work .... 3 

Difficult to secure help 3 

96 



WHY BOYS LEAVE FARM 

Letters from those tvho have left 

Every one of the 155 letters is worth 
reading, because these letters express 
personal points of view. There is every 
internal evidence that they are genuine 
expressions of conviction, and are not 
written for effect. Since it is not possible 
to print all these letters in the space at my 
disposal, I have chosen those that seem to 
be most definite or emphatic, and at the 
same time present divergent points of 
view. I first transcribe seventeen letters 
from persons reared on farms in New 
York state, and then follow with charac- 
teristic statements from farm boys of 
other geographical regions. 

(1) "The principal reason why I left the 
farm and am here in college, working toward 
another business, is the influence of the prin- 
cipal of the village school which I attended for 
several years. He continually urged me to get 
away from the farm, to go to college, and prepare 
myself for something better. 

''While I was living at home, on the farm, 
the attractive side of farm life, as I believe is 

7 97 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

very generally the case, was not brought out. It 
was merely hard work all the time. So I, like the 
majority of farm boys, was not at all unwilling 
to leave the farm. 

''However, I now sincerely think that I shall 
sometime return. I truly love the country and 
all the attractions of nature. Since I left it, I 
have constantly come to appreciate the country 
more. I have spent my summers on the farm, 
and very pleasantly spent them, too. I now 
firmly believe that farm life may be made the 
most attractive kind of life. The trouble is, in 
the majority of cases that have come under my 
observation, that farm life is not made attrac- 
tive for the boys. Many of them have very little 
education, and their life is to them merely hard 
drudgery from early morning to late at night, 
with only a bare living as a return. Hence, they 
are only too glad to leave it. They are in the 
dark, and don't know that there is light for 
them. 

''With the increase of agricultural education 
and betterment of conditions in the country, I 
believe this will change. The young men will 
come to see the brighter side of farm life, and 
the attractions and advantages in staying on the 
farm. ' ' 

(2) "I intend to follow some other business 

98 



WHY BOYS LEAVE FARM 

than farming because I consider that farming is 
all work and no pay. It is nothing but drudgery 
from morning — early morning — until late even- 
ing, and there is little chance for social and intel- 
lectual advantages." 

(3) ''I have lived on a farm, except for the 
last year before entering Cornell, all my life. 
j\Iy reason for not wishing to continue on a farm 
is the financial side of the question. The work is 
also distasteful to me, not because it is hard, 
for I think a farmer 's life is a comparatively easy 
one, but because a farmer's work is never done." 

(4) *'The duty of securing from the soil the 
means of sustenance for the race belongs to the 
farmer. This involves hard and incessant toil 
with no adequate reward. The scope of the far- 
mer's activities is limited to the farm upon 
which he toils, as is that of his enjoyment. 

''The farmer's burden is heavy, painful, and 
without reward, with no prospect of a change in 
his condition. Life is short and uncertain. Why 
spend it performing a painful task, which is at 
the same time a thankless one?" 

(5) "I intend to follow civil engineering be- 
cause it gives a better chance to get out in the 
world and keep in better touch with a broader 
kind of life. The farm is far from unattractive 
to me, and I think the farmer's life as near the 

99 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

ideal life as it is possible to get. I like the life, 
could have a farm of 150 acres for the trouble 
of working it, and there is no more fertile land 
in the state than that same farm ; but a farmer 's 
life is rather too monotonous, and it has been my 
experience that he vegetates if he is not careful. 
This is noticed on going to the city after some 
months on the farm. ' ' 

(6) ''I left the farm because I realized that 
farming, like any other productive business, needs 
capital, and I had only the questionable posses- 
sion of brains to capitalize. The only unattrac- 
tive feature to me was the young farmer start- 
ing out in life with a mortgaged farm having to 
compete with men who owned their farms." 

(7) *'I do not intend to follow farming as 
a business, for the following reasons : 

^'a. It is unprofitable. 

^^b. It is a life solely of physical labor. I 
consider myself better adapted naturally for 
mental work. 

^'c. Although a respectable occupation (all 
honest work is respectable), it does not offer a 
field for extensive development of the broader 
and nobler of human faculties. 

^^d. It is a life which involves a never-ending 
monotony of daily routine. 

^^e. Viewed from its present status, it is a 

100 



WHY BOYS LEAVE FAEM 

life in which no self-respecting man should ask 
a woman to participate. I say this because of 
the ceaseless care and unlimited toil which fall 
to the lot of the farmer ^s wife. 

^' While I have many minor reasons, the fore- 
going are the most important that occur to me at 
the present time." 

(8) ''On the farm, there are longer hours, 
harder work, and smaller compensation. ' ' 

(9) ''It has been a matter more of accident 
than of choice. When I was fifteen my father 
retired, being then fifty-five or more. My elder 
brother is a farmer (market-gardener on about 
fifty acres) and my other brother a civil engi- 
neer. As far as finances go, the farmer does 
better than the civil engineer, although I judge 
their abilities equal, each in his line. The civil 
engineer has perhaps less work and more time 
for recreation. I believe, however, that if the 
farmer would be satisfied with savings per year 
equal to the civil engineer, this condition would 
be reversed. 

"I believe the answer to your question lies 
in the narrow-minded and selfish attitude of far- 
mers toward their sons rather than in anything 
unattractive in farm life itself. In my own 
case, my choice is by no means final and is due 
to accident rather than to deliberation." 

101 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

(10) ''Farm life is unattractive to me because 
of the social conditions. Social life on the farm 
is simply stagnation. I dread the horrible mo- 
notony of such a life. I love farming, I love the 
farm. I like to go out in the fields and work 
under the clear open sky ; but man is a social be- 
ing, and is not destined to live an isolated life." 

(11) "It seems to me that one can never, 
without assistance, become independent on a 
farm, and without independence farm life is 
little more than drudgery. Life on a farm is 
bound to be, to a certain extent, dull and tedi- 
ous, with little variety or relaxation. One tends 
to become narrow, sordid, and self -centered, 
with few interests, and to lose his inspirations 
for higher things. His finer sensibilities are 
deadened by toil, and he becomes entirely uncon- 
scious of the many interesting and beautiful 
things around him. It is the man who was not 
born there who really sees and appreciates the 
beautiful things in the country. ' ' 

(12) "If I had been heir to a large or even 
a good-sized farm, I would probably have en- 
gaged in farming. 

"The chief reason why farmers' sons leave 
the farm, from my observation, is that their 
fathers or their neighbors are always crowded 
by their work, and have no time to spend in va- 

102 



WHY BOYS LEAVE FARM 

cations or reasonable rest periods. This is not 
the fault of farm life, but rather the result 
of unbusinesslike management and unscientific 
operation. ' ' 

(13) "My father was a very poor farmer, 
although one of the few in the neighborhood 
owning his farm, and as I wished to advance 
according to new ideas, we could not agree. I 
went into the sale-stable business, but wishing 
to be more than a horseman, I am seeking for a 
degree of doctor of veterinary medicine. Being 
heir to farm land, I shall be interested in the ad- 
vancement of agricultural lines. When I retire 
from active professional life, it will probably 
be to the farm. ' ' 

(14) ''When I entered the university and 
registered in mechanical engineering, I had the 
idea that a fellow had to get off the farm, as 
the saying goes, 'to make something of himself 
in the world,' and that a living could be made 
more easily, with more enjoyment, in another 
profession. But now, after seeing a little of 
the other side of the question, if I had the four 
years back again, agriculture would be my col- 
lege course. As for country life being unat- 
tractive, I have always found it much the 
reverse. The best and happiest days of my life 
have been on the farm, and I cannot but wish 

103 



THE TEAINING OF FARMERS 

that I were going back again when through with 
school work." 

(15) "The struggle for a mere living is too 
strenuous. Reliable help, a necessity on a large 
farm, is very difficult to obtain, either male or 
female. The life is pleasant enough in summer, 
but the cold and snow of winter and the deep 
mud of spring virtually shut out many farmers' 
families from social intercourse with their 
friends, and tend to make them narrow-minded. 
With smaller farms, more scientifically managed, 
employing labor-saving devices more generally, 
especially in the performance of household work, 
and with improved roads and daily mails, the life 
would be almost ideal. ' ' 

(16) '^I was reared on a farm in central 
New York. It is my intention to go into some 
other business than farming because there is not 
enough money in it, and because one has to 
depend too much on the seasons for the produc- 
tion of good crops. One disadvantage is, that 
if a farmer wishes to sell anything, he must take 
what is offered him, instead of setting his own 
price. On the other hand, if he wishes to buy, 
he must pay what is asked. In regard to work- 
ing farms on shares, there is but very little 
money made. Also, the >vork is too hard and 
the hours are too long. ' ' 

104 



WHY BOYS LEAVE FARM 

(17) (From a woman) '*A woman must be 
primarily a cook, whether on a farm or in the 
city. It is difficult for a woman to fill this posi- 
tion and at the same time manage outside work. 
Not so much of this outside work comes to the 
woman in the city as in the country. If a hus- 
band considers the farm a place to which he 
declines to be 'tied down/ a woman finds it 
rather difficult to get things done on the farm, 
enough to keep it in good condition. ' ' 

(18) (Connecticut) "I intend, to follow the 
profession of civil engineering. I did not take 
up farming because in New England a farm is 
not of much value for earning a living unless 
situated near enough to a large city to sell gar- 
den truck. Dairy farming is about all there is 
left to a farmer, and one firm virtually controls 
the market at my place, and places the price 
very nearly as low as the cost of production. 

*'My town is a summer resort for New York- 
ers, and being thus thrown into close connection 
with them, the young people, as a rule, desire to 
be like them. So they either take some course 
in a business college and start for the city, or 
they start for the city without such training 
at their first opportunity. 

''Then, too, there are excellent schools scat- 
tered all about New England, and the height 

105 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

of the ambition of the young country lad is to 
enter one of these schools, and be with the sons 
of the 'big men' of the country. After he has 
passed through the school, he will naturally wish 
to follow his classmates on through college. 
Since most of these colleges lack an agricultural 
department, he chooses some other profession. 

"The older farmers of my section of New 
England are quite often wealthy, but they se- 
cured their wealth in former years, and they 
themselves say that farming at the present time 
does not pay, and are educating and encourag- 
ing their sons to seek business in -other fields. 

"Outside of going to the country fair once 
a year, the farmer's son does not see in what 
way other more successful farmers are attain- 
ing their success. Of course every farmer 
takes farm literature, but this does not appeal 
to him so strongly as to visit and see for himself 
these successful farms. 

' ' When I had finished my common-school edu- 
cation, my father came to the conclusion that 
since, in his opinion, farming did not pay, he 
would send me through college, although he 
hated to see me leave the farm. 

"I might add that the drudgery of such long 
hours as are necessary on a dairy farm is an 
unattractive feature of farm life in my locality. ' ' 

106 



WHY BOYS LEAVE FARM 

(19) (Pennsylvania) "a. The drudgery of 
life on a small farm. 

"h. The small profits. 

'^c. The farmer is tied down, because crops, 
etc., cannot wait. 

^'d. Other fields seem to offer possibilities for 
greater and nobler achievements. 

''These are a few of the unattractive features 
of farming that come to my mind. If, when 
younger, I had seen more of farming on a large 
scale or had known more successful farmers, I 
might now be taking agriculture. Even now I 
hope some day to own a farm." 

(20) (Maryland) "I am intending to be a 
civil engineer. There are several reasons why 
I did not care to be a farmer. First, farming 
in my country, where I naturally w^ould want to 
farm, does not pay fair return for efforts. Sec- 
ond, the influence exerted at home was opposed 
t© such a life without a strong desire on my 
part, which I did not have. Third, I had a 
strong desire to become an engineer. ' ' 

(21) (Ohio) "Because I was not born the 
heir to a fortune. Had I been, I can think of 
no more attractive place to spend life than a 
farm. Without plenty of money from other 
sources than the farm itself, a farmer's life is 
too limited. He cannot travel, he cannot have 

107 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

a large acquaintance, or make himself known in 
the world. Other lines of business offer more 
money, especially if one is naturally qualified 
to enter them, and hence broader and more 
profitable careers." 

(22) (Illinois) "No money in farming. I 
like the city and its pleasures. There is nothing 
'doing' on a farm." 

(23) (Wisconsin) "On a farm, especially 
dairy, a person is kept at work each day, no 
time to be away more than half a day at a time, 
as help on a farm is not always to be trusted. 
As compared with other occupations, farm life 
demands longer hours, harder work, and less 
pay; so, being in a position to leave the farm 
and receive an education, I did so, knowing 
that at any time the farm is there. For inde- 
pendence there is no person that can be more 
so than a farmer." 

(24) (Missouri) "I do not intend to return 
to the farm because, with my present education, 
I can do better as an engineer. 

"I think I can best give you the information 
you wish by answering the question, Why did I 
decide to leave the farm ? 

"a. There was no money in farming, unless 
a man had money to invest. Even then there 
was but little. 

108 



WHY BOYS LEAVE FARM 

'^6. Disadvantages of being away from schools, 
churches, entertainments, social life, etc., which 
a city affords. 

"c. Somewhat too ambitious to be content 
with the quiet life of a farmer. 

^^d. A natural liking for machinery and engi- 
neering work. 

^'e. I was physically not strong enough to do 
the heavy, hard work which farm life demands 
of the man unable to hire it done. The most 
unattractive part of farm life is the long day's 
work, under a hot, sweltering sun, following a 
harrow or pitching hay or doing similar work. 
Plowing was an exception : I like to plow. 

''Farm life has changed a great deal since I 
left the farm twelve years ago. Machinery has 
been added, making the work easier; farming 
has become more scientific, giving scope to the 
man who does not wish to be a mere nobody. 
For the last few years there has been more 
money in farming. 

"At the end of my arts course I could have 
returned to the farm, made a better farmer, 
been more contented, and worth decidedly more 
to mankind and to my country than I could 
ever have been without it." 

(25) (Arkansas) "In my part of the coun- 
try cotton is the only staple crop, the produc- 

109 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

tion of which is too monotonous. The labor in 
that part of the country is all done by negroes, 
and, owing to the climate, must always be. The 
race question has never affected us materially, 
but it must be solved in the next few years, and 
the outcome is uncertain." 

(26) (Mississippi) ''Lack of remuneration in 
proportion to the amount of labor. Lack of 
opportunities for social intercourse. 

''I was too far from school, church, and post- 
office." 

(27) (North Dakota) ''I do not care to be a 
farmer because, first, I do not like farm work ; 
second, I do not think there is the chance for ad- 
vancement on a farm that there is in other lines, 
either social or financial ; third, the farmer in 
general is not looked up to intellectually ; fourth, 
there is not enough 'doing' on the farm for a 
boy." 

(28) (From a large ranch in Montana) "Yes, 
I intend to follow some other business, but not 
because farm life is unattractive, for my opin- 
ion of the farm is health and true freedom ; but 
I can follow a professional business and have 
the farm as a side issue, and through it always 
have a steady income." 

(29) (Washington State) "I did not leave 
the farm because it was unattractive or because 

110 



WHY BOYS LEAVE FARM 

my home was not a pleasant one. Had there 
been only one boy in the family, I should prob- 
ably be there to-day. As there were two, one 
was naturally the farmer and the other the 
mechanic, gunsmith, and engineer. My reputa- 
tion in these lines made it necessary for me to do 
much technical reading, even before entering 
the high school, and every step after that car- 
ried me farther from the farm. A year with 
the IT. S. engineers put the question beyond 
further doubt. I enjoy farm life and farm 
work. ' ' 

Questions raised hy the replies 

These native replies at once bring np 
many questions of great public concern, 
for they have to do, in a broad way, with 
the position that the farmer occupies in 
the economic and social structure. These 
young persons come from good or at least 
average farm homes; otherwise it would 
be wholly improbable that they would seek 
a university training. Exactly forty per 
cent, of them desire to leave the farm be- 
cause it is not remunerative. It is easy to 
say that this financial unsuccess is due to 
poor individual farming; but it is a ques- 

111 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

tion whether a good part is not due to 
causes that go further and deeper than 
this ; and it is the part of the publicist and 
statesman to determine what these causes 
are. 

Farming is virtually the only great 
series of occupations that is unorganized, 
unsyndicated, unmonopolized^ uncontrolled, 
except as it is dominated by natural laws 
of commerce and the arbitrary limitations 
imposed by organization in other business. 
In a time of extreme organization and sub- 
ordination of the individual, the farmer 
still retains his traditional individualism 
and economic separateness. His entire 
scheme of life rests on intrinsic earning by 
means of his own efforts. The scheme in 
most other businesses is to make profits, 
and these profits are often non-intrinsic 
and fictitious, as, for example, in the habit 
of gambling in stocks, in which the specu- 
lator, by mere shrewdness, turns over his 
money to advantage, but earns nothing in 
the process and contributes little to civ- 
ilization in the effort. If the farmer steps 
outside his own realm, he is met on one 

112 



WHY BOYS LEAVE FARM 

side by organized capital and on the other 
by organized labor. He is confronted by 
fixed earnings. What he himself secures 
is a remainder left at the end of a year's 
business. 

Neither can the question of the onerous- 
ness of physical labor be overlooked in the 
replies. About one-fifth of the replies men- 
tion this as a distinct handicap. This will 
no doubt surprise those persons who have 
thought of machinery as eliminating the 
toil of farming; but it must be remem- 
bered that the farmer is both capitalist and 
workingman (in this respect being almost 
unique, as a large class of the community), 
and that this question takes a different as- 
pect according to the point of view from 
which the farmer looks at it. The replies 
raise the question as to whether the far- 
mer is to continue to occupy this dual 
position. 

The replies of these serious-minded 
youths should also set every thoughtful 
person wondering what is to be the place of 
the farmer in the social scheme of things, 
and whether the present trend is doing 

^ 113 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

him complete justice. About seventeen 
per cent, of the replies consider that the 
farmer has distinct social disabilities. 
They suggest the question as to how far 
agriculture is to depend for its progress 
on the efforts of the separate individual 
farmer, and how far on coordinated effort. 



114 



.Why Some Boys and Gikls Take to 
Farming 

IN the previous chapter I presented the 
reasons that 155 college students gave 
me for leaving the farm to engage in other 
occupations. These students saw little op- 
portunity in farming, forty per cent, of 
them alleging that the business offers no 
financial reward. Twenty per cent, said 
that the physical labor is too exacting, and 
approximately an equal number that no 
social opportunities are offered. These re- 
plies present one view of the vexed ques- 
tion as to what the place of the farmer is 
to be in our coming civilization. There 
was a strain of hope running through some 
of the replies to the effect that in the 
future the opportunities on the farm would 
be improved; but, for the most part, the 
responses were hopelessly against the busi- 
ness of farming as a means of personal 
achievement. 

115 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

When I asked for the opinions of those 
who had planned to leave the farm, I asked, 
also, for the reasons that moved those who 
have planned to remove from city condi- 
tions to farm life and those who, reared on 
farms, intended to return there after leav- 
ing college. The responses are most illu- 
minating, and, of course, they are hopeful 
for those of us who look to the open coun- 
try to aid in some large way in maintain- 
ing and forwarding the best civilization. 



1. CITY TO COUNTRY 

Sixty-eight town-bred or city-bred stu- 
dents wrote me that they intend to pursue 
farming as a business, and to this end had 
entered themselves in the College of Agri- 
culture. I should explain, however, that I 
use the word ^^ farming' ' in its broadest 
sense as comprising those many occupa- 
tions that are directly concerned with the 
products of the soil and are in intimate 
touch with actual rural-life conditions ; for 
some of these young men expect to be 

116 



WHY PEKSONS TAKE TO FARMING 

creamerymen in the small rural factories 
rather than actual tillers of the soil. 

The nature of the replies 

Many of the respondents give more than 
one reason for desiring to follow agricul- 
tural work, and in the following list the 
figures represent the number of times that 
the various reasons were alleged ; 

The personal or subjective desires 

Desire to be out of doors, and love of nature . 25 

Love of farm life 12 

Natural bent for farming 8 

Love for growing things 6 

Love for farm animals 4 

Desire to change from city to country ... 1 

What farming provides 

Farming is an independent occupation ... 18 

It provides healthful life 17 

There is money in farming 16 

It is an interesting or fascinating occupation . 7 
Provides as many advantages as does the city 3 

Farming broadens one 's mind 3 

A most agreeable way of making a living . . 2 

117. 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

What farming provides (continued) 

Provides good home life for self and children 4 

Farmer is never out of work 1 

He is not subject to unions 1 

Country people hold many things cheap be- 
cause they do not have to pay for them . . 1 
Farming requires and develops skill .... 1 

There is time for study 1 

Opportunity to understand nature .... 1 

Great economic and social possibilities ... 1 

Provides a cheap living 1 

It is a noble work 1 

It is a useful work 1 

A means of uplifting the community ... 1 

It is an active life 1 

What the letters say 

Following are some of the letters in full, 
chosen because tliey strongly present va- 
rious points of view : 

(1) A town-bred boy from the South, desiring 
to take up '^general farming." — ''I have always 
had a natural desire to work among economic 
plants and animals, and make my soils and barns 
the laboratories for such economic work. It is a 
supreme pleasure to see and to help accomplish 

118 



WHY PEESONS TAKE TO FARMING^ 

the fulfilment of certain laws of the funda- 
mental sciences to a-s high a degree as possible, 
under the conditions put in force, and get a 
result, in course of time, that brings much money 
and happiness. A farmer of this sort becomes an 
independent man in every sense of the term, 
and should prove a valuable citizen in his home 
<»ommunity. His increasing love for and study 
of nature also become valuable assets." 

(2) A town boy, expecting to go on a farm.— 
"''I like farming because it is Independent, 
healthful, noble, useful, and wide enough to 
utilize all of one 's faculties. ' ' 

(3) From the city, desiring to follow farm- 
ing. — ''Because it is the most independent life 
and the most healthful one; also, a man is free 
to do as he pleases, for he has not a boss stand- 
ing over him all the time. The things around 
him grow up with him, and each has its own 
particular place in his life. ' ' 

(4) Reared in a city of about 100,000, ^nd 
now desires ''to get a position on some large, 
well-run farm."— "My main reasons for living 
on a farm are because 

''a. I much prefer the country to the city; 

"6. I think there is a good opportunity to 
make a success as a scientific, businesslike far- 
mer on a large farm; 

119 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 



i ( 



c. The living expenses are less on a farm, 
and for me the pleasures are more numerous. ' ' 

(5) Beared in a town in Germany. — "I de- 
sire to have a farm after I have saved enough to 
get what I want, and after I have seen enough to 
know where my best possibilities are. I want to 
go on a farm because I love the independent life, 
because I see business there, because I have a 
good, strong opponent (nature) on which to 
grind my knowledge, and because I want to 
demonstrate the feasibility of some social and 
economic problems in which I am interested." 

(6) Reared in a city of 100,000 inhabitants, 
and desiring to be a farmer, — ''Primarily, for 
pecuniary profit ; secondarily, for the indepen- 
dent, healthful life. ' ' 

(7) Reared in a city. — "Perhaps the farm is 
attractive to me for much the same reasons that 
the city attracts country-bred lads — a desire far 
change. One thing is certain, I do not want to 
be cooped up in a factory or office all my life. I 
have seen all 1 want of factories. A farmer works 
hard, but he is never out of a job; never on a 
strike, and never subservient to a labor union. 
Lack of experience, lack of physical power to 
endure heavy labor, and the necessity for a 
reasonable income in the near future, will force 
me to take a town position; but sooner or later 

120 



WHY PEESONS TAKE TO FARMING 

I hope to be a farmer, keeping a salaried posi- 
tion until the farm assures me a good living 
and is entirely paid for." 

(8) From a woman bom in the city, and 
wishing to follow ''some not too strenuous out- 
door occupation."— "I desire to go on a farm 
probably because I never lived on one. 

' * 'As a rule a man 's a fool ; 
When it 's hot he wants it cool, 
And when it 's cool he wants it hot — 
Always wanting what is not. ' 

"My father and my mother's brothers were 
born on the farm; but they left it as soon as 
they were old enough to act independently, so 
that, in my farming notions, I have no encourage- 
ment from relatives. They, however, had their 
way to make. I do not expect to make money 
on a farm,— that is, not primarily, — though I 
hope to make the farm support me (who am the 
proposed overseer) and all the other workers 
on it. 

'*A farmer who works his own farm is only, 
after all, an independent day-laborer, and no 
one can blame a young man for trying other 
methods of making a living. The case of some 
women with a small amount of capital is quite 
different, however. For instance, if a woman 

121 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

has a strong love for green fields and trees 
and animals; if every living, growing thing is 
interesting to her; if she has had a college edu- 
cation ; has seen the world, or a good portion of 
it, knows, besides, what office work in a city is, 
and is thoroughly acquainted with boarding- 
house life, she is in a position, I fancy, 
thoroughly to enjoy a real home on a farm and 
all the luxuries which that implies. It is only 
people of experience who can fully appreciate 
the country and what it can ^ive. The country 
man holds many things cheap because he never 
paid directly for them. 

"To be sure, the farm must have all the so- 
called 'modern conveniences,' with telephone 
and rural free delivery, besides; and, if the 
woman expects to live on it the greater part of 
the year, it should have good railroad connec- 
tion with some large city. The woman whom 
we are considering expects neither to follow the 
plow, do the chores, nor the housework, except 
in cases of emergency ; but she should be capable 
of doing any one of them, and is trying to become 
so. What a generous life such a woman can 
lead on a farm on an income which would sup- 
port her but meagerly in a city! This is my 
theory. When I have put it into practice, I hope 
to be able to substantiate it. ' ' 

122 



WHY PERSONS TAKE TO FARMINa 

2. COUNTRY TO COUNTRY 

It was to be expected that the most 
significant responses would come from those 
students who have had experience of farm 
life and also of college life. I have replies 
from 193 students of this class, all enrolled 
in the College of Agriculture at Cornell 
University. Aside from the great signifi- 
cance of these replies from the occupa- 
tional point of view, the responses afford 
an interesting commentary on the wide- 
spread notion that the agricultural col- 
leges '' educate the boys away from the 
farm"; and what is true (or not true) in 
this particular agricultural college is also 
true in others. 

Replies from farm students 

Following is a tabulation of the various 
reasons that are alleged by these 193 farm 
students for desiring to remain on the 
farm. I publish them only for the purpose 
of stating some of the motives that actuate 
farm boys, and not as statistics or as a con- 

123 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

tribution to a scientific study of the general 
problem. 

The personal desires 

Love of out-of-doors and of nature .... 55 
Love of farm life and of the kind of work . . 47 
Love for living and growing things .... 28 

Love of the free life of the farm 15 

Natural bent to the farm 5 

Have already a personal interest in a farm . 5 



What farming offers or provides 

An independent life 77 

A healthful life 41 

A profitable occupation 39 

Not a hurried life 3 

A natural life 3 

A simple life 2 

Wide opportunities offered by farm ... 23 
Ideal place for home and rearing of children 20 
Involves interesting social and economic prob- 
lems 8 

It is a pleasant and agreeable occupation and 

provides a happy life 17 

It is instructive 6 

124 



WHY PERSONS TAKE TO FARMING 

State aid is making farming more attractive . 5 
Farmer 's condition is better than the average 

city man's 6 

A good education is essential 4 

Opportunities for study 2 

Best place for spiritual life and growth . . 4 

Good social opportunities 4 

Opportunity for individual work and in- 
itiative 3 

Cheaper living than in the city 3 

An honorable occupation 4 

Has more knowledge of farming than of other 

occupations 5 

One can see the fruits of his own labor ... 2 

Provides a better life in old age 1 

The life is not monotonous 1 

Farmers have good food 1 

Provides opportunity to acquire property . 1 
Farming provides both mental and physical 

work 4 

It offers a variety of work 4 

The work is useful ; it affords good training ; 

it is easy in winter (each) 1 

Along with these reasons for desiring to 
remain on the farm, some of the respon- 
dents also mention disadvantages ; but they 
regard these disadvantages as being over- 

125 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

balanced by other considerations. These 
disabilities are as follows: 

No money in farming 4 

Kequires better health than the respondent has 4 
Farming requires more capital than respon- 
dent possesses 3 

Farm life is lonely 3 

The work is hard 2 

Farmer does not control prices 1 

Small opportunities for development ... 1 

No employment for women 1 

Letters from farm-hred students 

It will now be interesting to transcribe 
some of the reasons that these farm boys 
allege as determining their choice to re- 
main on the farm, for they may be looked 
on as indigenous and non-theoretical; and 
these reasons have the advantage, also, of 
having been formulated after the persons 
had seen something beyond the farm. It 
is most interesting to know, also, that 
nearly all these 193 students are from New 
York state; for it is often asserted that 
agriculture offers little inducement in the 
old East as compared with the West— a 

126 



WHY PEKSONS TAKE TO FARMINa 

statement which usually is made in igno- 
rance of the facts. 

(9) ''I was reared on the farm where my 
father was born and where my grandfather 
lived. I like dairying and general farming. I 
choose farming because I like to care for horses 
and cattle and to see the crops that I have 
planted grow; and I like the independent life 
that the farmer enjoys." 

(10) "I think the farm offers the best oppor- 
tunity for the ideal home. I believe that farm- 
ing is the farthest removed of any business from 
the blind struggle after money, and that the 
farmer with a modest capital can be rich in in- 
dependence, contentment, and happiness. I 
lived one year in a city (Philadelphia), which 
was long enough." 

(11) "The farmer is the most independent 
of men. He leads a happy, out-door life, and 
is his own boss. His conditions are much better 
than those of the average city man." 

(12) ''I wish to live on the farm, for I like 
the work. One is not doing the same thing 
every day, but doing a variety of things. There 
is satisfaction in knowing that the products of 
one's labors are to be his and not somebody's 
else. Then, there is the independent life; one's 

127 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

time is his own, and if one does not use it to 
the best advantage, he has only himself to 
blame. 

' * If I were unable to farm on my own account, 
but had to work out, then I should go to the 
city/' 

(13) "I lived in the city until I was eleven, 
when my parents moved to the farm. There I 
attended the country school until I was fifteen, 
when I was sent to the city high school in Buf- 
falo. The last six years I have been in the high 
school and at Cornell. 

' ' I desire to go on a farm because of the inde- 
pendence and healthfulness of the life. The 
farmer has a wider field of business, which re- 
quires a vast range of knowledge, far beyond 
that required by the ordinary business man, I 
think that a comfortable income can be obtained. 
Only a few men in the cities are earning more 
than is required for their subsistence. My chief 
reason is that I like the life and the out-door 
work. ' ' 

(14) ^^a. Respect for agriculture as an occu- 
pation. 

''&. To enjoy the freedom of the country life 
and the beauties of nature. 

^'c. To partake of the pleasure which comes 
from conquering natural obstacles. 

128 



WHY PEKSONS TAKE TO FARMINa 

^'d. To give that which is in me the best 
chance to develop. 
'^e. To have a congenial means of support. '^ 

(15) "I intend to stick to farm life, for I 
see nothing in the turmoil of city life to tempt 
me to leave the quiet, calm, and nearness to 
nature with which we, as farmers, are sur- 
rounded. I also see the possibilities of just as great 
financial success on a farm as in any profession 
which my» circumstances permit me to attain." 

(16) ''Have always lived on a farm, with 
the exception of three years, when I lived in 
town. I desire to follow farming, with stock- 
breeding and dairying as main branches. I be- 
lieve it is the most independent life ; that it has 
the broadest field in which to work ; that intelli- 
gence, judgment, and business ability are needed 
here as much as anywhere ; that it gives oppor- 
tunities for the best development of a man; 
that a farmer may enjoy many blessings which 
can not be measured by dollars and cents. It 
gives opportunity for study of the most inter- 
esting kind, and it is the best place for spiritual 
growth and life. ' ' 

(17) ''Having always lived on a dairy farm, 
and having taken care of domestic animals, it is 
virtually the only business I understand. 

"Although there are many discouragements 

9 129 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

and a great deal of hard labor, I think a person 
of average ability, who enjoys farming and tak- 
ing care of and studying characteristics of 
domestic animals, will be a more independent 
and useful man if he sticks to the farm than if 
he follows any other business. 

''Perhaps there would be more money in 
some other line of work. Money is not all of 
life; so I will go back to the farm." 

(18) ''a. I like the work. 

^'h. The farmer is the most independent man 
that lives. 

''c. It is healthful work. 

'^d. It is a good place for a happy home. 

''e. There is profit in it, and it is gaining 
headway every day." 

(19) ''I am going back to the farm because 
it is the most healthful business I have ever 
known and I like it as a business from start to 
finish. The cattle alone are enough to call any 
one back to the farm." 

(20) '^a. Because agriculture seems to offer 
one of the greatest opportunities financially. 

"6. Because I see in agriculture the most 
pleasant and agreeable occupation. 

^'c. Because I love nature, and may be 
brought into more intimate relations with it 
by this profession than by any other. 

130 



WHY PEESONS TAKE TO FARMINa 

'^d. Because a great chance for improvement 
and advance is offered in agriculture. ' ' 

(21) *'I have tried city life, and do not enjoy 
it. I prefer to work in the open air, and enjoy 
working with animals. I believe that a man 
can be as truly successful on the farm as any- 
where else, and can lead a much happier life." 

(22) "I was born in the country, but edu- 
cated in the city, returning home on vacation. 
I expect to follow live-stock farming : first, be- 
cause it is my father's desire to keep the family 
estate still in the family, and being the only son, 
it devolves upon me; apart from this, he pre- 
fers that I should be a farmer as a means of 
earning a livelihood. 

''Coordinate with this is my own wish to lead 
the life of a farmer, probably because I inher- 
ited the love for it and because I have always 
understood, from earliest childhood, what I was 
to do. I love nature, and like to be closely 
connected with its workings. I like farm life 
for the freedom and opportunity offered for suc- 
cess from individual work." 

(23) ''I am an only son. My parents wish 
me to return, and, as I study, I see nothing more 
inviting. I see this more than ever after study- 
ing agriculture at Mount Hermon and here. 
Then, if a man is immortal, and I believe he is, 

131 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

it is what he is that counts, and not altogether 
money. We need studious Christians on the 
farms, and I want to be one. I expect some 
day to have a plain country home. A good 
place to live is next to nature." 

(24) "I should like to take up experiment- 
station work for a number of years, then go on 
a farm. 

'^a. There is as good opportunity for one to 
exercise his business ability and apply his 
scientific knowledge on a farm as anywhere. 

'^b. The average man is surer of acquiring 
a competency, and having a good home of his 
own, in the country than in the city. 

^*c. A good farmer will find life less monot- 
onous, as well as more healthful, in the country 
than in the city. 

^'d. One man's social and intellectual in- 
fluence will be stronger and .last longer in the 
country than in the city. 

^'e. The best place to bring up children, and 
especially boys, is on a farm in a good agricul- 
tural community." 

(25) "I was born and reared on a farm. It 
has always been my intention to become a far- 
mer. After living in the city for several years, 
while attending preparatory school, I have come 
to the conclusion that the farm is the only place 

132 



WHY PERSONS TAKE TO FAKMING 

to develop well-rounded, sturdy manhood. The 
farmer need not fear lest his children be led 
astray by the evil influences of an indolent city 
life; he is independent and, if temperate, sure 
of good health and long days." 

(26) ''I shall follow poultry husbandry and 
fruit-growing : 

^'a. Because of the independent freedom of 
farm life. 

^'h. Because of my desire to raise a family 
where my influence will be the dominant one. 

''c. Because of the false standards set up in 
the modern city; namely, hurry, worry, and 
selfishness. 

^'d. Because of the great opportunity of- 
fered to the man of skill. ' ' 

(27) ''I like the farm probably because I 
was brought up on one, and have learned to like 
the free and independent country life, to be with 
stock, to harvest the grain and hay, to try to 
raise or grow the best and most fruit on a tree. ' ' 

(28) ''I expect to make a business of breed- 
ing live-stock. I like to work out of doors, 
where the sun shines and the wind blows, where 
I can look up from my work and not be obliged 
to look at a wall. I dislike to use a pen as a 
business. I want to make new things and create 
new wealth, not to collect to myself the money 

133 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

earned by others. I can not feel the sympathy 
which makes me a part of nature, unless I can 
be nearer to it than office or university life 
allows, I like to create things. Had I been 
dexterous with my hands, I might have been an 
artist ; but I have found that I can make use of 
as high ideals, use as much patience, and be of as 
much use in the world by modeling in flesh and 
bone as I can by modeling in marble.'^ 



3. THE CONCLUSION 

The point of view of all these various 
personal replies is most significant, and it 
is in bold contrast to the general run of 
the responses of those who plan to leave 
the farm. The present replies are marked 
by the prominence given to ideals and by 
the subordination of mere personal emolu- 
ment and desire for money. Forty per 
\cent. of those who are leaving the farm 
allege that they do so because there is not 
money enough in it; very few of the 261 
students who plan to be farmers mention 
the expectation of earning money as the 
leading motive, and a number of them men- 

134 



WHY PERSONS TAKE TO FAKMINa 

tion the relatively small earning power 
and then declare that they will follow the 
business in spite of that handicap. Nearly 
every one of them gives higher ideals of 
living as the propelling motive, and these 
ideals crystallize about two points— the 
love of nature, and the desire of a free 
independent life. 

Moreover, these are responses of strong 
conviction. They evidence pride of calling, 
and not one of them is apologetic. They 
are hopeful ; they all have a forward look. 
They are surprisingly unselfish. Not one 
of them asks for power. They show that 
even in this epoch of hurried city-building, 
the love of the open country and of plain 
quiet living still remains as a real and vital 
force. 

I was impressed, in the replies of those 
who are to leave the farm, with the em- 
phasis placed on lack of money, hard work, 
and small social opportunity : they had not 
had a vision of the new country life ; I am 
impressed in these replies with the recur- 
rence of such ideals as love for the work 
that one is doing, education, study, per- 

135 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

sonal influence, happiness, service, home. 
With these young men, their business is to 
be an affair of the heart. We hear much 
about the greed of money and power and 
the great dangers that threaten our run- 
away society ; but I wonder whether, in the 
end, the countryman will not still have hold 
of one of the reins. 



136 



The Common Schools and Faeming 

THE agricultural colleges are now ac- 
complishing results of great and per- 
manent value, in spite of the fact that they 
are isolated from the common schools, on 
which good collegiate training is supposed 
to rest. The country is well peopled with 
good farmers, in spite of the fact that the 
school in the open country has given them 
no direct aid in their business. 

Responsibility of the school 

Sympathy with any kind of effort or 
occupation, and good preparation for en- 
gaging in it, are matters of slow and long- 
continued growth. This g'rowth should 
begin in childhood, and should be aided by 
the home and the school. The country 
school carrier a greater responsibility than 
the city school, in proportion to its advan- 
tages, for it is charged not only with its. 

137 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

own country problems, but with the train- 
ing of many persons who swell the popula- 
tion of cities. The country school is within 
the sphere of a very definite series of life 
•occupations. 

The subjects taught in the common run 
of country schools are not the essentials; 
the school does not represent or express 
the community. I do not know that any 
schools teach the essentials, except as in- 
cidents or additions here and there, and 
lessentials cannot be taught incidentally or 
accidentally. Arithmetic and like studies 
are not essentials, but are means of getting 
at or expressing the essentials. The first 
effort of the school sjiould be to teach per- 
sons how to live. 

The present methods and subjects in the 
rural schools have come to the schools 
from the outside. If we begin the school 
work with the child's own world, not with 
a foreign world or with the child's world 
as conceived of or remembered by the 
teacher or the text-book maker, it is plain 
that we have by that very effort started a 
revolution. 

138 



SCHOOLS AND FARMING 

The next step that the school must take 
is to realize its social responsibility to its 
community. It should be much more than 
an educational organism. It must relate 
itself to the whole life and welfare of the 
people, and be one of the fountains from 
which good ideals of service flow. 

Educational values 

All this supposes that the school is in the 
process of developing into a kind of insti- 
tution that will serve the living needs of 
the time, and be even fundamentally differ- 
ent from the existing system. We have 
only begun to understand what education 
means and what it can do for society. If 
this is true, then we must first reconstruct 
our ideas of educational values ; and there- 
fore I pass to a consideration of the old 
courses and the new. 

An eminent scholar once said to me that 
he saw no reason why a dairy building 
should be placed on a university campus, 
for he could not see that it had any relation 
to education. This remark called for no 
justification of education by means of 

139 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

dairying: it merely expressed liis concep- 
tion of what education is. 

We have so long associated educational 
processes with particular subjects that we 
are in danger of regarding these subjects 
as constituting the sum of education. This 
attitude was well illustrated to me some 
time ago on the occasion of my visiting a 
farm home. There was a disagreement be- 
tween father and mother as to where John 
should attend college, and I was asked to 
judge. The mother closed her argument 
with the remark, ^'His father wants him 
to go to an agricultural college, but I want 
him to get an education. '' In spite of all 
my questioning, I could not get her further 
than this ; but she was sure that she saw a 
broad distinction. 

1. THE QUESTION OF THE EQUIVALENCY OP 
STUDIES 

The principle of the equality in peda- 
gogical value of all the different lines of 
study that comprise the curriculum of the 
modern higb-school or college, is now 

140 



SCHOOLS AND FAEMING 

widely accepted in theory, but there is 
much reservation in accepting it in prac- 
tice. This reservation is no doubt in part 
well founded, and it must be given due 
hearing. Every new thing must prove it- 
self as against the things that are estab- 
lished and accepted. It is right that pos- 
session is nine points in the law. 

The older order 

The old or established subjects are such 
as language, literature, mathematics, usu- 
ally typified in a ^^ Latin" course. The 
new subjects are science on the one hand, 
and the industries on the other. The science 
course is almost universally accepted as of 
equal value with a strictly classical course, 
often with the reservation, however, that 
more or less Latin and mathematics form a 
part of it. The industrial courses are as 
yet less completely organized and are of 
course less accepted in terms of educational 
equivalency. The burden of proof is sup- 
posed still to rest on them. 

The argument for the Latin course is 
that it has met the approval of a long 

141 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

line of teachers, that its methods have been 
well considered and tried by long experi- 
ence, and that it demands snch a habit of 
concentration and of definite continuing 
effort as to give it superior training value. 
Latin is prized for its tense, and the under- 
standing it gives to the structure of lan- 
guage and the writing of English; this 
argument is well taken, although it prob- 
ably would be difficult if not impossible to 
prove that the best English writing and 
speaking have in practice come from a 
study of Latin, notwithstanding the fact 
that Latin has been so universally taught. 
There are those who still hold that in its 
very essence there inheres in the Latin 
course an educational quality that does not 
exist in the sciences and the industrial 
arts : those who hold this position naturally 
feel that all concessions made to the sci- 
ences and the industries weaken by that 
much the essential intellectual value of a 
course of study. 

Whether there is in essence a superior 
training value in the subjects that are 
specially associated with the narrow Latin 

142 



SCHOOLS AND FARMING 

course, is really not an academic or meta- 
physical question. It cannot be determined 
by opinion or by any process of abstract 
reasoning. In the end, the intellectual 
value of all courses of study will be deter- 
mined by their results in men and women. 
In determining these results, we must be 
careful not to assume an arbitrary or single 
standard as to what an educated man is. 
It is fair to assume that an educated per- 
son is one who is so trained that he is an 
honorable and efficient member of society^ 
whose mind is sensitive to all learning and 
achievement past and present, and whose 
sympathies extend freely to all the higher 
emotions of the race. If one were to mea- 
sure the men and women of his acquain- 
tance by this standard, he would probably 
be wholly unable to determine by what par- 
ticular educational route the person had 
arrived, notwithstanding the presumption 
in favor of the classical route because of 
its universal presence in schools and col- 
leges and the newness of other routes. 

For several years I have tried to give 
some attention to the character of the in- 

143 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

struction by the different kinds of subjects. 
It has not appeared to me that language, 
literature, and mathematics are any better 
taught in the schools and colleges than the 
sciences and some of the industrial arts. 
It all resolves itself at the last into a ques- 
tion of the equipment and personality of 
the teacher; and we all know that few 
teachers in any subject are as good as we 
desire them to be. 

Nevertheless, it is right that in any par- 
ticular institution the presumption should 
lie with the older subjects, until the new 
subjects can prove their educational worth 
by the severest tests. There is much train- 
ing value in orderliness and consecutive- 
ness of work, in careful thoroughness, and 
in the moral discipline that comes from 
obligatory study. To my mind, the educa- 
tional values of the different subjects do 
not lie in the essence of the subject-matter 
so much as in the way in which they are 
taught. If different subjects were taught 
by the same person, the educational value 
of all of them would probably be about the 
same. I should not consider the acquiring 

144 



SCHOOLS AND FARMING 

of mere manual dexterity in any subject or 
study to be a complete educational process. 
Combined with all industrial work, there 
should be such a systematizing of subject- 
matter and such a method of teaching as 
will bring out the underlying reasons and 
strongly develop the mental grasp. If the 
educational or training value of a course in 
science or in an industry is not equivalent 
to that of a language or literary course, it 
must be because it is not so well taught. 

The newer order 

We are given to berating the older educa- 
tion for not producing better results, but 
the fault may not have been so much in the 
subjects that were taught as in the fact that 
in many cases no subjects were taught well. 
There should be a strong central backbone 
to any elementary or secondary course of 
study, and the same may probably be said 
of most college courses. Whether this 
backbone shall be the customary subjects 
of present courses of study, or whether the 
school work shall crystallize about other 
subject-matter, may well be left to the 

i<> 145 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

gradual evolution of education to deter- 
mine. The probability is that quite another 
framework will control the school life in 
times to come; if it does not, then the 
school will remain relatively stationary. 

As the idea grows of the necessity of a 
good mental equipment for all persons, we 
must be increasingly ready to admit new 
subjects into the school and college course. 
This means that some schools will develop 
strongly in one line and others strongly in 
another line, and that the student may 
exercise a choice of schools; or, that we 
shall come more and more to a depart- 
mental organization of schools. No doubt 
both methods of organization will develop. 
The essential point is that there may be 
more than one route in education : it is our 
responsibility to see that all routes are of 
equal value and dignity. 

Whatever may be said or done by the 
close adherents to the older means of edu- 
cation, it is inevitable that other means 
shall come in. This, of course, does not 
mean that the old subjects shall go out, 
although the teaching of them may need to 

146 



SCHOOLS AND FAEMINa 

be redirected in some cases : they will con- 
stitute one part, but not necessarily a so- 
called fundamental part, in a new scheme 
of school-teaching. I expect to see a re- 
crudescence of the so-called classical 
studies. I would eliminate nothing from 
educational programs, but I would add 
everything; and I would have it so ar- 
ranged that persons could have a choice of 
routes without disparagement or handicap. 
We must train the coming race in the 
means and practice of living. New ideals 
and aspirations must grow out of the life 
that they live. The means of life are con- 
stantly more numerous, and their relations 
are constantly more complex. When so- 
ciety was more homogeneous than at pres- 
ent and when it was expected that only a 
few persons out of many were to be well 
trained, one general line of study suited 
very well. But we can no longer neglect to 
teach the philosophy of life and the arts by 
which men and women become a useful part 
of a growing society. In the nature of the 
case, therefore, the sciences and the indus- 
tries will make headway in our schools and 

147 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

colleges, and those who would oppose them 
are setting themselves against the course of 
human evolution. 



2. THE NATURE OF THE FORTHCOMING 
SCHOOL 

The acceptance of the educational equiv- 
alency of studies is the very first es- 
sential to the development of a kind of 
school that is capable of redirecting coun- 
try life. The person who rejects this prem- 
ise does not accept education in terms of 
the daily life, or if he does accept it, his 
concurrence is only a concession to popular 
demand. 

The four R 's 

The old schools were built on the four 
R's,— reading, 'riting, Arithmetic, and 
ruler. They were a combination df certain 
formal subjects and what is called ^^good 
order'' or discipline. There are still those 
who held that the pursuit of reading, 'rit- 
ing and 'rithmetic is of itself an end in 
education. These subjects, however, are 

148 



SCHOOLS AND FARMING 

tools or means to be used in the acquiring 
of knowledge and power. Of course, the 
pursuit of them is an educational process; 
but the basis of education is at first to 
develop the child by means of his activities 
and of the things that make up his world: 
he needs reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic to 
enable him to make use of his world and to 
understand it. 

Similarly, ^^good order'' or discipline is 
not an end in itself. By focusing atten- 
tion, it develops the mind to follow a given 
line of thought and to be undiverted. It 
has its moral significance. But many 
teachers seem to act on the principle that 
there is virtue in the very act of sitting 
still and of not whispering. The school of 
the future will have the activities of life in 
it; and the ^^ order'' of the school-room 
will be the order that is naturally a part of 
the work that the pupils do-, not the order 
imposed by the ruler. The only real school 
discipline, in the end, is the natural con- 
trol that the subject and the teaching hold 
over the pupil; it is the pupil's interest in 
his work. The larger part of the really 

149 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

fertile school work cannot be pursued by 
the pupil in silence and inaction. 

Agriculture in the schools 

I look to the school, when faced about, 
to be an essential factor in the evolution of 
the country life that we all hope for. All 
the people hold this hope, or something like 
it. We may differ as to the kind of school 
that is needed. The common idea seems 
to be to make an end of the matter by in- 
troducing ' ^ agriculture " into the school. 
Many persons object to this for the ele- 
mentary school and some of them for the 
high-school, on the ground that children 
should not be made or influenced to special- 
ize. I am not now asking that the public 
elementary schools teach trades and pro- 
fessions. George F. Warren has put the 
matter tersely in his sentence, ^ ^ While it is 
not desirable to try to make farmers, it 
does seem desirable to stop unmaking 
them. ' ' 

Personally, I have very little care 
whether a class in agriculture is introduced 
in any school or not: if the people are 

150 



SCHOOLS AND FARMING 

ready for it and the teacher is prepared, it 
should go into the high-school and possibly 
in lower grades; but the real nub of the 
matter lies much deeper than this. The 
whole process of the school must change. 
We must begin with the child's world and 
not with the teacher's world, and we must 
use the common objects, phenomena and 
activities as means of education. When 
these objects, phenomena and activities are 
agricultural (as they are in a rural com- 
munity), then agriculture becomes a means 
of education, but it is not agriculture in the 
sense of a specialty leading directly to the 
occupation of farming. That is to say, 
in such cases agriculture (which is the sum 
of the community life) becomes the real 
backbone and motive of the school. Other 
subjects grow out of it and are picked up 
with it as the school life proceeds. 

I would have the child know the people 
of his community, and how they live ; how 
the community supports itself; its relation 
to the neighboring community; how many 
schools there are and how many churches, 
and how they came to be there ; the roads ; 

151 



THE TRAINING OF FAEMEES 

the general lay of the land, and something 
about the soils ; how many farms in the dis- 
trict, and what they produce and why ; the 
common or significant animals and plants ; 
the woods and the streams ; how the local- 
ity is governed ; how the houses are built ; 
what the local factories are; and so on. 
And I would teach him how to keep himself 
from being sick or lazy. I would not have 
all this told to the child as news or pleasant 
pieces of information. I would have it 
constitute the real work and substance of 
the school, carrying the method out to 
the world questions as the pupil reaches 
the proper understanding; and I would 
enrich his life by bringing in the literature 
and the history and biography, and incor- 
porating them into his education, as the 
figures are woven into a fabric. 

It may seem to be a difficult thing to 
teach all this; but that is no argument 
against it, for such things must be taught. 
We must train the child into touch and 
sympathy with life, not take him out of and 
away from life. Ideals that are worth any- 
thing must grow out of the common things 

152 



8CH00LS AND FAEMING 

and the daily life. Mere abstract ideals 
are no ideals at all : they are only dreams. 

But these things are not difficult to teach. 
We think that they are difficult because few 
persons have yet been trained to teach 
them. We are so obsessed with the book 
habit, and so possessed by what has been, 
and so depressed by the domination of 
educational method, that we are not free 
really to teach. 

They say to me that this kind of teach- 
ing would lack definiteness and consecu- 
tiveness and would tend to looseness of 
school work. My first reply is that I would 
like to see school work loosened up. I am 
leaving the old order of school work be- 
hind. My second reply is that a good 
teacher would make this kind of teaching* 
just as definite and systematic as any 
other; and I am not at all alarmed by the 
old bugaboo of ^'drilP^ and *^ mental dis- 
cipline.'' Such work, when well done, 
should have vitality, and this is exactly 
what the old process so often lacks; it 
would lend itself in the least degree to 
memorizing and mummery. 

153 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

Of course, I would not confine the work of 
the school to the local subjects ; but I would 
ground the pupil in the concepts of his own 
place and time. If he is started and di- 
rected right, he should make a better Latin 
scholar as well as a better nature scholar ; 
and it would be folly to try to bend all his 
energies to farming and to nature-study, 
or to any other special line. 

School to represent the community 

All this means that the school represents 
and reflects the life of the community, and 
works out suggestions for the betterment 
of the community. In other words, as I 
have said, the school carries a social as well 
as an educational responsibility. 

Our ideal of a state university is an in- 
stitution that really represents the state 
and helps in working out the problems of 
the state. It lends its aid officially in tax 
commissions, railway commissions, public- 
service commissions, in problems of agri- 
culture, manufacture, mining, and com- 
merce. It gives advice in education (which 
is its particular specialty) and in social, 
economic, and even religious questions. 

154 



SCHOOLS AND FARMING 

Now, I look on the school of the future as 
the little university of its community, 
working out the problems of the commu- 
nity and developing leadership. The school 
should aid the rural community (my sub- 
ject is country life, and I leave it to others 
to write of town life) to better roads, bet- 
ter cattle, better butter, to more eggs and 
more crops, to better seed corn and better 
alfalfa, and to higher efficiency everywhere. 
It should be a local forum. It should co- 
operate with the church, the library, the 
fair, the farmers ' organizations, with every 
farmer and every housewife, tying the 
community together and making it a better 
place to live in. 

This cannot come about without active 
cooperation by the people. We do not 
even yet take our schools seriously. They 
must become a part of the government of 
the community, and be just as essential as 
the crops or as politics. The school must 
have much more money, particularly in the 
rural districts, than is now given it ; and the 
people will provide the funds when the school 
begins to do the work. 

One of the means of improving the 

155 



THE TRAINING OF FARMEES 

schools is the consolidating of two or more 
districts into one. No doubt it is often 
necessary and advisable to consolidate 
schools, but I warn my reader that it is 
easy to carry this process too far. It 
usually follows that when schools are con- 
solidated, they begin to copy city-school 
methods. I much doubt whether the meth- 
ods of city schools are on the whole such as 
will endure, even for cities ; and I am much 
more in doubt whether they are best for 
country schools. There is a value in the 
simplicity, directness, democracy, and even 
the smallness of the ^^ district school' ' that 
we cannot afford to give up lightly ; and it 
is an institution of the community. The 
sterility of the district school lies not so 
much in its remoteness, separateness, and 
smallness as in the lack of funds to enable 
it to do the work of a school. The state 
must come to the aid of the district school. 

The high-school 

In this discussion, I have chiefly had in 
mind the school life below the high- school. 
If the primary and intermediate teaching 

156 



SCHOOLS AND FARMING 

is started right, the high- school work will 
largely take care of itself. The reform is 
needed in the beginning years, not because 
the work in these* years is now more imper- 
fect than in the high-school years, but be- 
cause the process is a point of view that 
needs to be established very early in life, 
and because relatively few youths reach 
the high- school. In the high- school, the 
specializing studies begin. Specially quali- 
fied teachers are usually provided, and 
these teachers should be able to handle 
their own subjects. It is significant that 
the popular agitation for agriculture teach- 
ing has considered chiefly the children ^ ^ in 
the grades,'' and that the books and leaf- 
lets have been written for this range. 

Process of evolution 

I am not criticizing the schools. We owe 
everything to the schools. I am developing 
a point of view. We are in the process of 
evolution. All the improvements in schools 
and the introduction of new subjects are 
contributing to bring about a new order; 
what I should like to impress is that these 

157 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

improvements are only steps and are not 
ends in themselves. The final result must 
be a kind of training institution that differs 
radically from the present system both in 
its constitution and its processes. We are 
coming, as I have said, to a new conception 
of the function of education. 



3. A SCHOOL man's OUTLOOK TO THE KURALr 

SCHOOL 

The following sensible and practical 
vision of the part that the school should 
play in the life of the rural community is by 
Fasset A. Cotton, formerly Superintendent 
of Public Instruction of Indiana and now 
President of the State Normal School, La 
Crosse, Wisconsin: 

^^The relation of rural schools to rural 
life is the greatest educational problem of 
the present day, and as yet few have real- 
ized its stupendous importance. Upon its 
solution depends in large measure the fu- 
ture welfare and stability of our people. 

158 



SCHOOLS AND FARMING 

This is no idle statement. A study of the 
factors involved will show that it is true. 
To arrive at conclusions of any value, at 
least three phases of rural life must be 
studied: material and commercial prog- 
ress ; social life ; and the schools. 

*^The change in farming methods is one 
of the marvels of the century. With for- 
ests cleared and swamp lands redeemed^ 
the steam plow does the work of many men. 
The soil is prepared, planted, cultivated^ 
and the harvest is gathered by machinery. 
The sickle, the scythe, the cradle, and the 
flail have given way to the mower, the self- 
binder and header, and to the steam 
thresher. The dairy, from milking to but- 
ter-making, has become scientific. Chicken- 
raising and stock-growing have become 
matters of intelligence instead of chance. 
Good roads, steam railways, interurbans, 
rural routes and telephones, have all but 
eliminated time and distance, and have 
brought the farm into close touch with 
everyday life in the commercial world. 
Easy transportation and the knowledge of 
market prices have brought the farmer a 

159 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

fair return for his products. While this 
progressive spirit has in a way touched all 
farm life, this does not by any means tell 
the whole story. 

**It is still a far cry from the small hill- 
country farm to the wide western plains 
where farming is done on so large a scale. 
The difference between what may be called 
domestic farming and commercial farming 
is tremendous. It is the difference between 
the small farm owned and occupied and 
cultivated by the owner for a living, and 
the landed estate owned by a syndicate or 
a wealthy individual and farmed for com- 
merce. More and more as the years come 
and go, must millions of our people get 
their living from the land; and more and 
more must domestic farming become a 
dominant factor in the life of our people. 
It is with this phase of farming rather 
than with commercial farming on a large 
scale that I am interested, and it involves 
at once the question of social life and edu- 
cation of the family. After all, it is the 
family that lives on the farm that makes 
the problem an interesting one. 

160 



SCHOOLS AND FARMING 

^^ Before any reliable conclusions are 
reached, certain mistaken notions must be 
corrected. Doubtless the stories of farm- 
ing by machinery and the great results of 
commercial farming are responsible for 
these. To the unthinking, farming has 
come to be one long holiday picnic, when 
everybody rides. Nothing can be further 
from the truth. Even with the most ap- 
proved machinery, there is plenty of work 
for head and hand on the farm ; and when 
it is realized that the use of all this up-to- 
date machinery is by no means general, 
and, moreover, that its use would be impos- 
sible on small farms, it will be apparent 
that there is still work to do. 

*^It looks as though the same forces that 
brought farm life into touch with the com- 
mercial world might easily bring it into 
touch with the social world ; and they might 
make possible the pleasures, comforts, 
luxuries and culture of city life with none 
of its unpleasant features. But it must be 
admitted that this possibility has not been 
very generally realized. In many instances, 
the social life of the people has not kept 

11 161 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

pace with material prosperity. Big barns 
filled with grain, wide fields over which 
blooded stock roams, and the latest farm 
machinery, have often kept the dwelling- 
house small and barren enough of comfort 
and beauty. And so it may be fairly stated 
that the home interests have not always 
kept pace with the material interests of the 
farm. The mothers and daughters who 
have borne their share of the burden of toil 
have been the larger sufferers. Under 
existing conditions, it is not strange that 
farmers ' children are attracted to city life, 
and that they leave the farm. Life is too 
hard and the social advantages are too few 
and far between. It has been suggested 
that the custom of European farmers who 
live in villages would solve the problem. It 
is thought that such local centers would 
relieve the isolation and furnish the much 
needed social life. 

*^The real solution of the problem in 
this country, however, lies in the coopera- 
tion of economic, social, and educational 
forces with the school as the center. There 
is a vital relation between country life and 

162 



SCHOOLS AND FARMING 

the country school that has not been seen. 
The country school has not even begun to 
fulfil its mission. Hitherto all schools 
have been alike,— city, country, and town. 
Their province has not been to educate, to 
develop boys and girls into men and women, 
but simply to impart facts of arithme- 
tic, geography, and history. The coun- 
try has had such schools, but they have 
never recognized their distinctive environ- 
ment or let it make any difference in their 
mode of procedure. They have never real- 
ized that their problem is a distinct one, 
nor that the means are peculiar. The far- 
mers could not solve the problem: they 
have their own work to do, and it is not 
their business; and educators have wor- 
shiped tradition so long that it has been 
almost impossible for them to look fairly 
and squarely at the nature, conditions, en- 
vironment, and needs of a child and let 
these determine the process and means of 
education. 

'^Now, with the school as the center of 
township life, economic, social, and educa- 
tional interests can work out the solution 

163 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

together. The school center is better than 
the village center. It is doubtful if the 
latter is possible. In the nature of the case, 
most farmers must live on their farms. 
Those whose circumstances would permit 
could build their homes in the school center 
vicinity, but the school, either the consoli- 
dated or the large district school, must be 
the center. The township school should be 
conducted under the ideal conditions men- 
tioned above. The teachers should be well- 
prepared men and women, thormighly in 
touch with the problems and interests of 
the township, and permanent residents of 
the community. They should understand 
the relation of education and agriculture, 
and should be able to create in the boys 
and girls a love for the land. The school 
should be the center of social life where 
the farmers' families could assemble fre- 
quently to hear lectures, to enjoy concerts 
and high-class entertainments, and to dis- 
cuss problems of vital community interest. 
The teachers should be capable of direct- 
ing all of this life and of taking part in it. 
The school center should be the meeting- 

164 



SCHOOLS AND FARMING 

place for farmers' institutes and clnbs, and 
should be the political center of the town- 
ship, where all civic questions could be dis- 
cussed. What phases of life the principles 
of centralization shall include, the conunu- 
nity will easily decide. Good roads from 
every direction will center here, and con- 
venience will shortly locate all residences 
upon these direct lines. Of course, the 
natural conditions of the township must 
determine the center or centers, for hills, 
streams, and size of the township may 
make more than one center necessary. 

^ ' Three things, then, are fundamental in 
this problem: First: the cooperation of 
economic, social, and educational forces 
with the school as the center is absolutely 
essential. The one-room isolated school, 
unless a very large one, can no longer meet 
the needs of the people. Second : commu- 
nity life with its dominant interest, agricul- 
ture, must determine the nature of the 
work in the school and the mode of pro- 
cedure. Third : the teachers must be well- 
prepared men and women, capable of 
dealing with the problems of life, willing to 

165 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

make the community their permanent 
home, and to take the solution of its eco- 
nomic, social, and educational problems as 
their life work/' 



4. THE NEED OF A KECOGNIZED SYSTEM 

The work of education by means of agri- 
culture is in danger of becoming scattered. 
It is being taken up in the public schools 
here and there, and the agitation for it is 
widespread; but there is yet little organi- 
zation or system in it. 

Schools and departments in colleges and 
universities 

Old-line colleges and universities are 
also seeking to have schools or departments 
of agriculture, often of secondary grade, at- 
tached to them. These, also, are no part of 
an organized system; and it is not always 
certain that their environment will be such 
as to insure satisfactory results without 
the guidance of some supervising authority 
or administrative method. 

166 



SCHOOLS AND FARMING 

In normal schools 

Normal schools, more or less indepen- 
dent of general supervision, are also be- 
ginning to teach, agriculture. They will 
prepare teachers for the public schools. 

Separate schools of agriculture 

There is a rapidly spreading demand for 
special or separate schools to teach agri- 
culture, and many states have already es- 
tablished them. These schools are mostly 
outside of any school system and are un- 
provided with supervision. In part, they 
are no doubt protests against the common 
schools, as the separate colleges of agricul- 
ture and mechanic arts were once protests 
against the established colleges and uni- 
versities. In part, they are founded to 
provide better facilities and equipment for 
the teaching of the rural industrial sub- 
jects. In part, also, they are established to 
satisfy the desire of communities to have 
some institution, establishment, or feature 
in their midst; and the school of agricul- 
ture is now one of the institutions that are 

167 



THE TEAINING OF FARMERS 

relatively easy to secure from legislatures. 
These special schools will undoubtedly 
be of great value, and they ought to lead 
the way in a new kind of secondary educa- 
tion ; but at the same time we must not for- 
get that we have a public-school system 
that ought to be developed in these very 
lines, and it would be a pity to cripple this 
system by diverting attention elsewhere. 
We ought not to have duplicate systems of 
education. These special schools, of what- 
ever plan of organization, should supple- 
ment the public-school system, providing 
facilities for such persons as desire to go 
further than the public school can take 
them or who desire quickly to acquire a 
working knowledge of particular parts of 
farm life. 

In secondary schools 

The special separate schools of agricul- 
ture cannot meet all the needs of country 
people for education in terms of their 
daily lives. A farmer has a right to ask 
that his son and daughter be given facili- 
ties for country-life education in his home 

168 



SCHOOLS AND FARMING 

school. Tlie state should not make it nec- 
essary for him to send them away from 
home for the elements of such education. 
It follows that all public schools should be 
open to education by means of agriculture 
on the same terms that they are open to 
education by other means. New York has 
the basis for such a development in the act 
of 1908 for the encouraging of industrial 
and trade schools. I am convinced that 
this act marks a clear advance in industrial 
education in this country. This law recog- 
nizes industrial education as a part of 
the proper educational work of the state; 
and the principle that the initiative should 
lie with the people, and the maintenance be 
cooperative between the locality and the 
state. It provides that any public school 
that establishes such work and maintains 
it for a year shall receive $500 from the 
state for one teacher so employed and $200 
for additional teachers. It limits such in- 
struction to those who have taken the ele- 
mentary school course. It provides for an 
advisory board to confer with the school 
officers in respect to the work. Now, train- 

169 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

ing in agriculture is only one phase of in- 
dustrial education. Training in domestic 
or household subjects is another phase. 
These principles will probably soon be' ex- 
tended to the encouragement of education 
by means of agriculture and the domestic 
arts in all schools, both in town and 
country. 

A statute of this kind provides a means 
whereby the state makes additional appro- 
priation to the public schools. The schools 
need more funds. It is going to be a seri- 
ous question whether the money appropri- 
ated to the more expensive of the separate 
special schools would not go farther if 
given to the public schools for approved 
work. The public schools are beginning to 
rise to the occasion. 

In nearly all the states, some scheme or 
mode of introducing agriculture into the 
public schools is being agitated or tried. 
In many places, the work is now actually in 
the schools. The work should be guided 
and supervised by some competent au- 
thority or agency, as the state department 
of public instruction or the college of agri- 

170 



SCHOOLS AND FARMING 

culture, or, preferably, by both,— one on 
the side of administration and the other on 
the side of subject-matter. 

When such work comes in the schools, 
the state departments of public instruc- 
tion must develop a broad policy of indus- 
trial education, with a well-equipped 
bureau or division to* administer it. This 
division should also have relation to the 
work in special schools of agriculture. 
Personally, I doubt the wisdom of sepa- 
rating the administration of agricultural 
education from that of other industrial 
education. The two lines should develop 
coordinately ; and agricultural training 
should be in good part manual or "indus- 
trial.'' 

Relation of the whole 

Time is now at hand when the agricul- 
ture teaching in all these institutions 
should be related, and when an organized 
system or plan should be perfected. The 
college of agriculture in each state should 
be a part of this plan, dominating at least 
the technical agriculture work, so that 

171 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

sound subject-matter and rational points of 
view may run through all the schools. The 
entire development of agricultural training 
could then begin to proceed in an orderly 
way. 

Education of all kinds should be nation- 
alized, by the development of a strong co- 
ordinating department at Washington. 
The United States Bureau of Education 
should be much enlarged, by increased ap- 
propriations. It could greatly stimulate 
country-life education if it had the funds 
and the necessary organization. 



172 



The College of Agkicultuee and the 
Farm Youth 

WE may now ask what is to be the 
prospect for the person who is edu- 
cated for country life in a college of agri- 
culture. It is sometimes charged that the 
college educates ^ ^ away from ' ' or ^ ^ beyond ' ^ 
the farm. If this is true, it must be because 
it either alienates the student ^s sympathies 
or gives him an unpractical or not useful 
training. A main question, so far as the 
student is concerned, is whether his sym- 
pathies really are in danger of being 
alienated. 



1. OPINIONS OF STUDENTS 

What, then, do these agricultural stu- 
dents propose to do with their education? 

173 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

The only way to answer this question is to 
secure statements from the students them- 
selves. This I have done, and the sum- 
mary results are given below. It will no 
doubt be objected that this method is un- 
reliable in indicating the influence of the 
college, since a student may not follow his 
intentions ; yet it is probable that the influ- 
ence of a course of study may be better ex- 
pressed in the intentions of students than 
in statistics of the occupations of persons 
who have been some years out of college, 
for the occupation is in very many cases a 
matter of accident or of circumstances 
rather than of choice. The student's ideals 
are developed or confirmed in the college 
course; if later these ideals are modified, 
it may be no fault of the course. 



The students and their replies 

The students of whom I asked the ques- 
tions were members of the College of Agri- 
culture of Cornell University. My only 
reason for choosing this particular college 
is because I am connected with it. Prob- 

174 



THE COLLEGE AND FARMING 

ably the other agricultural colleges would 
give similar results. I have every reason 
to think that the replies express honest 
conviction. These persons represented 
three classes of students: four-year stu- 
dents, having entered with full university 
requirements and who were working for a 
baccalaureate degree; two-year students, 
pursuing general agricultural studies, ear- 
nest men and women, well grounded in 
common-school subjects, and many of them 
persons of maturity and strong native abil- 
ity, and all of them taking regular univer- 
sity work; and two-year specials in the 
teacher's course for nature-study and agri- 
culture, all of whom were women. Up to 
the time of the writing I had 179 replies 
to my inquiries. These replies may be 
roughly classified as follows : 



175 



THE TEAINING OF FAKMEES 



STATEMENT OF THE DESIRES OF 179 STUDENTS IN A 
COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE 



78 students reared 
on the farm 



35 regular students . . 
43 special students . . 

69 students reared 
in town or city 

45 regular students . . 

24 special students . . 

14 American women 
students 

5 regular students . . 
9 special students . . 

18 foreign students 

10 regular students . . 

8 special students . . 



o a 

<t) OS 

■« O 


Desire to teach 
or experiment 
in agriculture 


X a) 


5§ 


28 


6 




1 


40 


2 




1 


25 


11 


7 


2 


19 


3 


1 


1 



Q (teach nature-atudj 
and agriculture) 



179 



129 



37 



8 



While these specific replies are too few 
to furnish any basis of percentages, they 
nevertheless suggest the range of activities 
that appeals to a student body. They also 

176 



THE COLLEGE AND FARMING 

indicate that the desire for an agricultural 
life appeals to many men of many minds, 
and that it is apparently not a passing 
whim or fashion. 

Comments on the replies 

The figures in the last column are most 
significant, showing that only five of the 
entire lot fail to express their wishes as to 
choice of life work. Moreover, two or three 
of these persons declare that they desire to 
pursue some kind of agricultural work. 

The desire to engage in farming, as ex- 
pressed in the first column, is most various 
in kind and is of different degrees of inten- 
sity. I made a note of such desires as are 
specifically mentioned by the respondents, 
with the following results : 

Farm students 

Desire to return to home farm 13 

Stock and dairy farming 14 

Horticulture 11 

General farming 6 

Poultry 6 

Superintendent or manager 5 

12 177 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 



Town students 

Horticulture (mostly fruit and green- 
house business) 15 

Stock and dairy farming 14 

General farming 8 

Poultry 4 

Many of these persons who desire to take 
up direct farming occupations, however, 
have no capital with which to start. They 
will follow teaching or some other salaried 
work for a time, as they tell me in their 
replies, in order that they may accumulate 
the means to buy land and equipment. Of 
course some of them will never get back to 
the land after they are once engaged in 
another enterprise, but this will be their 
misfortune rather than their choice. 

The figures are most suggestive as to 
the intentions of the town students. There 
are, of course, no sharp lines of classifica- 
tion as between farm and town. Some of 
the students have spent their time in both 
city and country, and are essentially towns- 

178 



THE COLLEGE AND FARMING 

men, and I have so classified tliem. Some 
farm youths have moved to town, but these 
are essentially farmers, because they were 
reared in the farm atmosphere. Yet T 
think that there is sufiBcient line of separa- 
tion to make the categories worth while. 
It is rather surprising that more than 
sixty per cent, of these town and farm 
youths desire to engage in practical farm- 
ing. It is equally significant that all of 
those who wish to be landscape-gardeners 
are from the town. This is a reflection of 
the fact that the art sense is not yet devel- 
oped in the agricultural country. 

On the whole, this particular student 
body, so far as replies had been received, 
had set itself distinctly toward the devel- 
opment of agriculture, and seventy per 
cent, of the respondents would engage in 
practical farming if they were free and 
able to do so. One wonders what fortune 
the years will bring these young persons, 
and how many of them will find the oppor- 
tunities to which they are looking. 



179 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

2. WHAT IS TO BECOME OF THE EDUCATED 
EAKM YOUTH? 

Having made this brief examination of 
the sentiment of a certain agricultural stu- 
dent body, it will now be worth while to ask 
what an agricultural education may be ex- 
pected to accomplish for the farm boy 
and girl in general, and whether there is 
to be a place in the world for a person thus 
trained. This is the main question, so far 
as society is concerned. Are there careers 
for these college youth ? 

There is special reason for asking these 
questions, because it is still a frequent say- 
ing that college unfits a man for farm life, 
and also because there is no phase of edu- 
cational work that is now receiving more 
attention than agricultural education. 
Many of the colleges of agriculture that 
have been in an undeveloped state are now 
springing into great activity. States are 
giving large sums for buildings and equip- 
ment, to supplement the proceeds from the 
funds of the Land-grant Act of 1862. 

180 



THE COLLEGE AND FARMING 

What will this new educational activity 
accomplish for the farmer? 

It is first pertinent to consider what edu- 
cation does for a man. It inspires him, 
sets him new ideals, makes him a more 
vigorous and accurate thinker, gives him 
a new fund of information, and develops 
him with power. Then the question arises 
whether the farm will continue to satisfy 
the educated man. 

The two factors, then, are the college on 
one hand and the farm on the other. Can 
they work together harmoniously for one 
common object! 

The part played hy the college 

It is undoubtedly true that there has 
often been a lack of articulation or adjust- 
ment between college and farm, in spite of 
all their efforts to come together. This lack 
is not to be regarded as a shortcoming, but 
rather as a stage in the progress of evolu- 
tion of a new type of education. It requires 
time to work out an educational system 
that will adequately meet its ends, and 
probably in no other direction is this so 

181 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

true as in agricultural education : for agri- 
culture is exceedingly complex ; it rests on 
a multitude of sciences and arts, and it is 
handicapped by centuries of burdensome 
tradition. Agricultural education in this 
country, as an organized enterprise, is not 
yet half a century old; and half a century 
is none too long for the fitting of the ground 
and the planting of the seed. 

The leading colleges of agriculture have 
changed radically within the last five or 
ten years. The colleges fully recognize 
their weaknesses; but I find that most of 
the critics of them are unaware of the re- 
cent work of these institutions. No institu- 
tions are now making more substantial 
progress than these colleges of agriculture. 

The man of special parts has gone to 
college. For such men there are always 
special opportunities. In the last fifty 
years the commercial world has been upset 
and reorganized, calling everywhere for 
men of ability. The farm has furnished a 
remarkable share of these men, for the 
farm boy is industrious, frugal, able to 
turn his attention to many enterprises. We 

182 



THE COLLEGE AND FARMING 

think it strange that the college boy has not 
gone back to the farm ; it would be stranger 
if the men of unusual ability had gone back 
to the farm. To capable men the door of 
opportunity always opens : they enter. 

Another type of youth who has gone to 
college is the one who cares for books more 
than for affairs. The college satisfies him. 
He is willing to remain in an inferior posi- 
tion if only he can have access to libraries 
and to the company of bookish men. This 
is not anomalous, nor even strange. Some 
men like cattle; some like steam engines; 
some like books. Of course the book man 
is not adapted to be a farmer. If he goes 
back to the farm, he becomes the ^^book 
farmer. ' ' He has missed his calling and he 
has had his day. There is a place in the 
world for this man; and this place he is 
now finding. 

The college may take a man away from 
the farm because it opens the world to him 
rather than because it unfits him for the 
farm. Many of the men who leave the 
farm by the college route probably never 
would have made good farmers if they had 

183 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

remained; and it is to the great credit of 
farming that it has sent so many good men 
and women into the world. I hope that the 
open country will continue to contribute its 
due proportion of boys and girls to the 
cities and the professions. 

Much of the teaching also has been book- 
ish. It has been the avowed purpose of 
teaching to teach by means of books. The 
old colleges and academies rested largely 
on this idea. The common schools copied 
the colleges. The introduction into col- 
leges of subjects that have relation to af- 
fairs has changed all this. The mechanical 
engineer is not educated primarily in books 
and mere lectures, but in machines and en- 
gineering problems. The teaching of agri- 
culture also is similarly changing. More 
and more, the students are studying cows 
and corn, not studying more or less rele- 
vant subjects about cows and corn. The 
professors are men of affairs: they are 
** practical. " The consequence is that stu- 
dents are put in touch with the actual vital 
problems of the farm and the open country. 
The college and the farm are now beginning 

184: 



THE COLLEGE AND FARMING 

to articulate closely. The agricultural sub- 
jects are gradually being systematized into 
educational form, so that they become a 
means of developing real power. 

Again, the student usually receives no 
training farmward until he enters college. 
At that age his sympathies are likely to be 
set toward other enterprises. The com- 
mon schools have not trained countryward. 
So far as they train for college, it is mostly 
in the direction of ^^arts and sciences'' or 
^^ letters." If the youth is to be trained 
countryward, the training should begin be- 
fore he is sent to college. These remarks 
are well illustrated even in the arithmetic, 
which presents chiefly store-keeping, mid- 
dlemen, and partnership problems; yet 
there are hundreds of indigenous arith- 
metical farm problems, the figuring of 
which in the public schools would revolu- 
tionize agriculture. 

The agricultural college is now teaching 
from the farm point of view rather than 
from the traditional academic point of 
view. It is near the load. It will reach 
many persons rather than few. It is ask- 

185 



THE TEAINING OF FARMERS 

ing the common schools for help. It is fos- 
tering an indigenous agricultural senti- 
ment. 

The part played hy the farm 

We may now inquire what the farm does 
to help the farm boy. A farmer complained 
to me that his son had not come back to the 
farm from college. He had worked hard to 
retain the farm in order that the son might 
have it. It was apparent why the son had 
not gone back : the farm was not worthy of 
him. There was nothing on that particular 
farm that could hold the attention of a 
young man whose sensitiveness had been 
quickened and whose ambitions had been 
stimulated. I should have thought the boy's 
education a failure if he had been content 
on that farm. The father, remaining on the 
farm, had not realized all this. He had 
never thought that the son's point of view 
on most questions would be greatly changed. 

Often the college man is no longer content 
on the farm because of lack of congenial 
associates. There is no one in sympathy 
with his new attitude of mind. He is aware 

186 



THE COLLEGE AND FARMING 

that lie is a subject of silent curiosity and 
sometimes even of ridicule. Often there is 
no opportunity allowed him on the farm to 
work out the new methods and to express 
his new ambitions. We have assumed that 
the whole burden of responsibility rests on 
the agricultural college, but it really rests 
in part on the farm. The following state- 
ment in one of my replies is pathetic: 
^^My expectation is to go home eventually, 
provided I can secure permission to make 
some few improvements that are essential 
for successful farming— for example, a 
silo.'' 

It is wholly unreasonable for a farmer 
who has taken no pains to train his son for 
better farming to expect that the college of 
agriculture can change all this misdirection 
after the young man has reached maturity 
and can send him back to work under the 
old conditions. Farming has sent more 
boys away from the farm than colleges of 
agriculture ever have sent away. 



187 



THE TEAINING OF FARMERS 

Back to the farm 

The character of farming is changing 
rapidly. It is coming more and more to be 
an efficient, profitable, and attractive busi- 
ness. With marked exceptions here and 
there, in the past we have not given mnch 
consecutive thought to the business— not 
nearly as much as the merchant gives to 
his business or the doctor to his. It has 
been such an ^^easy^' business that un- 
trained men could succeed in it. The 
change in economic and social conditions 
is breaking up the tradition. Farming is 
becoming more difficult, and the old meth- 
ods must go. 

The mere growth of our population will 
make more intensive demands on the farm. 
We have been skimming the surface of our 
farms and sending the produce abroad. 
From now on, we must expend all our 
energies to feed and clothe our own people 
from lands that are no longer new. This 
will demand great skill. The ignorant and 
rule-of-thumb farmer will be forced out. 
In the future only the well-informed and 

188 



THE COLLEGE AND FARMING 

efficient- thinking man can succeed ; that is, 
only the educated man. 

The country is to offer other advantages 
to the educated man than merely to be a 
good farmer. There are good opportuni- 
ties for leadership on public questions— 
probably better opportunity and with less 
competition than in the great cities. The 
very fact that city representation is in- 
creasing in the legislatures should make 
the able country representative more of a 
marked man. The growth of the institute 
movement, of the grange and other rural 
organizations, gives fresh opportunity to 
develop leadership of a high order. 

It seems to me that, by the very nature 
of the progress we are making, the college 
man must go to the farm. In fact, college 
men have been going back from the begin- 
ning of the agricultural education move- 
ment. Statistics show that a very large 
percentage actually have returned to farm- 
ing, and this in spite of the fact that cities 
have been growing with marvelous rapid- 
ity, and that the whole system of agricul- 
tural colleges and experiment stations has 

189 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

been developing and calling for men. Con- 
sidering the limitations under which the 
agricultural colleges have developed, with- 
out sympathy, with the indifference and 
sometimes the opposition of educators, — 
the very men who should have known bet- 
ter,— with wholly inadequate funds, it is 
little less than marvelous what they have 
accomplished within a generation. It is 
probable that the proportion of students 
of the leading agricultural colleges who 
now engage in agricultural pursuits is 
greater than that of students of colleges of 
law or of other professional colleges who 
follow the profession for which the college 
stands. No one now questions the value of 
education to a lawyer or physician; why 
question its value to a farmer! The edu- 
cated man will go back to the farm if he is 
fitted to be a farmer. 

Should all the students become farmers? 

We may now consider another phase of 
the subject, whether it is really desirable 
that all the students from an agricultural 
college shall engage in agricultural pur- 

190 



THE COLLEGE AND FAEMING 

suits. The first great contest of the agri- 
cultural college was to convince the public, 
particularly the agricultural public, that 
higher education is needed for agriculture. 
That contest is now merely a memory. The 
second epoch is now on— whether agricul- 
tural and country-life subjects can be 
made the means of educating a man 
broadly, independent of the particular vo- 
cation that he is to follow. In other words, 
shall agricultural education be severely 
technical and professional or shall it be 
broadly educational? It is evident that 
these subjects are considered to have ex- 
cellent training and disciplinary value 
from the fact that most of the states, ter- 
ritories, and provinces in North America 
have now taken some kind of official action 
looking toward the introduction of agricul- 
tural subjects into the common schools. 
The common public schools do not teach the 
professions and trades. The result of 
good industrial education is to put the 
pupil into contact with his own problem, to 
place him near his work, to develop his cre- 
ative and constructive instincts, to give his 

191 



THE TKAINING OF FARMERS 

schooling purpose and meaning, to awaken 
a living sympathy with the moving ques- 
tions of the time, to fit him to live. The 
whole trend of education is to put the 
scholar into the actual work of the world ; 
therefore nothing can prevent the intro- 
duction of agricultural topics into the 
schools except a fundamental change in 
our point of view on the needs and prog- 
ress of civilization. 

I well remember the efforts, in my college 
days, to try to account for every stu- 
dent that had passed through an agricul- 
tural college as engaged in agriculture. 
"We shall soon be equally proud of every 
graduate of such a college who turns out 
to be a useful citizen in any walk in life, in 
country or city. 

We need an enlightened public sentiment 
on the broad questions of agriculture and 
country life. These questions concern the 
whole people. The colleges of agriculture 
are the very institutions that should spread 
this intelligence in all the pursuits and pro- 
fessions. 

We must remember, also, that not all the 

192 



THE COLLEGE AND FAHMING 

farm boys will be needed on the farm. We 
need better farmers rather than a greater 
number. We have farmers enough at pres- 
ent, perhaps still too many. The colleges 
of agriculture are charged not alone with 
the responsibility of developing agriculture 
as a pursuit but of helping to forward rural 
civilization. 

3. THE SUMMABY 

The best answer to the question as to the 
influence of the college of agriculture is 
to come from a general understanding of 
the situation of our industries, rather than 
from inquiries into particulars. 

The agricultural industries are rising 
into commanding positions. Every one 
seems to be aware that agriculture is mak- 
ing great progress. Now, all progress in 
the arts and industries rests on knowledge 
and the imparting of knowledge; in this 
case, it rests very largely on the work of 
experiment stations and colleges. The 
work of these institutions, accumulating 
slowly and methodically, has leavened the 

13 193 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

lump. If there is an agricultural problem, 
these institutions are to make the heaviest 
contributions toward the solving of it. 
Now and then, pieces of this great body of 
work are hit upon by a magazine writer as 
*^ discoveries, '' and he runs wild about 
them ; but the real advance is the result of 
small accretions. With all the awakened 
interest and the exploiting of individual 
instances, the townsman is not yet aware 
of the tremendous rise in the tone and 
eflficiency of the entire agricultural indus- 
try, which may well be likened to the 
gradual elevation of a geological stratum 
of continental extent. At the same time, 
the agricultural population is retaining its 
old-time vigor, independence, and native 
philosophy. The student who enter s< this 
field will most assuredly not succeed unless 
he has good talents and is well trained and 
properly estimates the problem; but it is 
nevertheless perfectly evident not only that 
educated men can succeed in agricultural 
arts, but that in time this type of man will 
be the only one who can hope for the best 
results. 

194 



ii 



1 



College Men as Farm Managers 

HAVE a farm of about two hundred 

acres near that came to me from 

my father. It has fairly good buildings, 
is near a good local market, and should be 
a good dairy farm. The present tenant, 
who is honest and faithful, runs it in the 
old way; and although it is no expense to 
me, and sometimes turns a fair profit, the 
place is not my ideal of what a farm should 
be. It seems to me that I ought to change 
superintendents, and I thought that among 
the graduates from your college there 
might be some good young man whom you 
could recommend. I pay my man $30 per 
month the year round, and he has a small 
garden plot and a cow, and gets his fire- 
wood on the place. I would be willing to 
pay a little more than this for a man who 
was scientifically trained and has had ex- 
perience, or I might let him work the place 
on shares. ' ' 

195 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 



1. THE PROBLEMS INVOLVED 

This kind of communication is typical of 
many that come to me with requests for 
college men to take charge of farms. Very 
often it is a worn-out or run-down place 
that is in need of a manager, and the owner 
is willing to let the man have half the earn- 
ings if he is successful in bringing it into a 
profitable condition. In some cases, the 
owner is not able to find any one who knows 
the place to rent it, and he is obliged to 
look abroad for a manager. 

There is such widespread misunder- 
standing of the problems involved in these 
questions that I cannot refrain from invit- 
ing my reader to a discussion of the merits 
of the case. There must be a complete 
readjustment of ideas in respect to the re- 
muneration that educated men are to re- 
ceive in agriculture, and it is time that we 
face the question. I understand, of course, 
that a graduate of any institution may be 
glad to work for a time merely for experi- 
ence, but of this I am not now speaking : I 

196 



FARM MANAGERS 

am considering the remuneration for man- 
agers. 

Outlook of students on the question 

In order to ascertain the expectations of 
students themselves as to their value to an 
employer, I addressed a letter of inquiry 
to the several hundred students in the Col- 
lege of Agriculture at Cornell University. 
I asked what kind of position or employ- 
ment the student desired on graduation, 
what wages or salary he thought he would 
be fairly worth, and why he put the value 
of his services at such figure. I had 135 
replies, coming from regular four-year 
men, one-year or two-year specials, and 
three-months^ winter-course students. 

Of this number, forty-two desired to be- 
come farm managers, eighteen of them 
being four-year men, thirteen of them spe- 
cials, and eleven winter-course students. 
Most of the men, in all classes, were 
brought up on the farm, and the others had 
had more or less farm experience. The 
sums that they specify in every case are 
for the first year of service, with expecta- 

197 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

tion that promotion may come if they are 
successful. These sums are not merely 
what is blindly hoped for, but are sug- 
gested by what college-mates and others 
before them have been able to secure in the 
way of remuneration in various kinds of 
business. 

The pay expected by the eighteen four- 
year men on graduation, for farm man- 
agership, ranges from $700 to $2000 per 
year, and most of the men expect to receive 
more or less subsistence in addition. 
The average salary for the eighteen is 
$977. It is interesting to compare these 
figures with those of seventeen four-year 
men who desire to become teachers, or to 
enter government service, in which salary 
schedules are already established. The 
range of salary expected by these persons 
is from $600 to $1500, with an average of 
$987. In these cases, no subsistence is ex- 
pected in addition to salary, except such as 
may be included in the traveling expenses 
of government agents. The pay expected 
by those students who are preparing to be 
farm managers on the whole exceeds that 

198 



FARM MANAGERS 

expected by those who desire to teach or to 
enter the public service. Those who desire 
to teach or to engage in government work 
usually look to the opportunity to under- 
take investigation as the chief ultimate 
reward, although many of them expect to 
engage in the profession only temporarily, 
until they can secure means to purchase or 
equip a farm. All the farm-manager stu- 
dents expected eventually to manage or 
work farms of their own. 

Of the one-year and two-year special stu- 
dents, thirteen desire to become farm man- 
agers, at pay ranging from $420 to $1000, 
and an average of $720. They expect, as 
do all farm managers, that a good part of 
the daily supplies can be got directly from 
the farm without money cost to them. Of 
these special students, nine would be teach- 
ers or experimenters, with salaries ranging 
from $600 to $1500, with an average of 
about $1000. 

The eleven winter-course men who would 
be managers of farms, desire pay ranging 
from $480 to $1000, with an average of 
about $700. Some of the winter-course stu- 

199 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

dents are properly high-price men because 
they are mature and have had much prac- 
tice, and they come to college to supple- 
ment their experience-knowledge. 

These salaries are all within reason, and 
they must be paid if good men are to be se- 
cured. The modern farm business must 
compete with the public service and the 
schools and with commercial organizations 
if it is to secure men of equal qualifications. 
Those farms that cannot pay such sums 
are not expected to compete: they are not 
in the managership grade; they must be 
run on the family proprietorship plan, and 
of these I am not now speaking. 

Students' replies 

The replies to my question as to the rea- 
son for stating the given figures of value of 
services, fall under six categories : 

1. The student considers himself to be 
worth to his employer the full amount 
of the pay that he mentions. 

2. One cannot afford to give his services 
for less than these figures after hav- 

200 



FAEM MANAGERS 

ing gone to the expense of a course of 
special training and having lost the 
money value of his services in the ef- 
fort. If farm managerships cannot 
pay these wages, it is not worth while 
to train oneself for them. 

3. Farm managers should receive as 
good pay as their classmates of only 
equal ability who teach or enter gov- 
ernment service, or who engage in 
other professions or occupations. 

4. The amount of investment in a thor- 
oughly good farm should demand 
such a proportion of the working 
capital to be expended on manager- 
ship. 

5. The men would expect to earn similar 
amounts if they had good farms of 
their own. 

6. The manager must have sufficient 
remuneration to enable him to live in 
a way that befits an educated and cul- 
tivated man. 

The reader may be interested to read 
some of the answers on this point (''why do 

201 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

you put your services at this figured *) . 
These are some of the replies : 

**Aii expert in other branches has a right to 
expect a good salary, so why should not a man 
who has spent four years specializing in agricul- 
tural studies and practical work?" 

''I think that the above figures [$1000 to 
$1200] are about right because a person, after 
four years' training, ought to be in a position 
to earn that amount. Even if an individual 
did not study at a college, but started immediately 
in some commercial enterprise, it is quite prob- 
able that he would be making as much as this 
and perhaps more. Why then should any one 
with special knowledge of any sort be his in- 
ferior in wage earning, if the branch which he 
has taken up is a profitable one ? ' ' 

''It requires at least $3000 (even to a labor- 
ing student if we take his time into considera- 
tion) to obtain a college education. This in- 
cludes the money actually expended and also the 
value of four years at ordinary wages. To 
this we must add the gain to mental efficiency 
also. I have always lived and labored on a 
farm and am acquainted with the practical side. 
My vacations are also spent there. I am taking 
as general a course as possible. My object in 

202 



FARM MANAGERS 

becoming a superintendent is not only to enable 
me to purchase a farm of my own, but to become 
as efficient as possible as a farmer. With this 
end in view, it will be to my advantage to work 
as conscientiously for my employer as it would 
be for myself alone. Taking these things all 
into consideration, I think $1000 would not be 
too high a salary to demand as a beginning." 

''Because I think it would be more profitable 
for me to run a farm of my own if I could not 
get $1000 a year as superintendent." 

"Because I think I can earn it [$1200 to 
$1500]. Besides my course here in college, I 
have lived and worked all my life on a farm in 
a good agricultural region of New York, and I 
think I can earn this much by running a farm 
for myself. ' ' 

"Because I was earning half that much [he 
asks for $750 the first year, $1500 the second or 
third] on a farm before coming to college." 

" I do not know whether I am worth it [$1000] , 
but I am sure I can get it." 

"Because I think I can make a dairy farm 
yield $45 to $50 per cow per year, in addition 
to expenses and interest on investment." 

"I have had five years' practical experience 
on an up-to-date farm paying $3000 per year; 
have had a business-college education; am now 

203 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

in college here ; know what work is, and am not 
afraid of it. I am satisfied I can bring a good 
farm to a paying basis on that salary [$1000 
to begin with]." 

Winter-course students 

From the various winter-courses of 
twelve weeks a considerable number of men 
go out as managers, although the larger part 
of them return to their own places. The 
dairy-course winter students go into the 
creameries and cheese factories. They are 
factory-men. The value of instruction to 
these men is somewhat definitely indicated 
by the increase in monthly wages as soon 
as they are out. Following are extracts 
from correspondence with the dairy-course 
winter students : 

A young man who could have done no 
better than earn ordinary farm wages took 
the winter dairy-course, and on leaving the 
dairy school, he secured a position as oper- 
ator in a small cheese factory at $50 per 
month. The next year his wages were in- 
creased to $75 per month, and he has been 
offered $85 per month for the year to fol- 

204 



FARM MANAGERS 

low. Another student writes that when he 
took charge of his creamery, just after 
finishing his twelve weeks' course, the pa- 
trons were badly discouraged. They were 
not making as good payments as other 
creameries in the vicinity. In a single 
season this creamery gained steadily, 
month after month, until in August the 
patrons were receiving the leading price 
for butter-fat. Another student writes 
that his wages is $13 per month more than 
before he took the winter dairy-course. 
Another student has had his wages in- 
creased one third within a year. Another 
receives $20 more per month. In another 
case the salary was more than doubled. 

Managers are not ^^ hired men^' 

These various cases, chosen as represen- 
tative of many, are given only for the pur- 
pose of establishing the fact in the mind 
of employers that well-trained men com- 
mand more than ordinary farm wages, 
whether in the region of superintendents 
and managers or in that of factory-men. 
It is not to be expected that college men can 

205 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

afford to become mere month hands on 
farms, except only temporarily when learn- 
ing the business. Of course these facts are 
recognized by good business men, and the 
demand for farm managers from the col- 
leges, at good remuneration, is greater 
than the supply; but the general public 
does not yet seem to realize them. 



2. CAN FARMING PAY SUCH SALARIES! 

My reader will at once ask whether agri- 
culture can pay such salaries or wages as 
these; and thereupon we come to the es- 
sence of the matter. The truth is that the 
college graduate has failed to go back to 
the farm in many cases because the farm 
has not been worthy of his efforts. We 
must remember, also, that the number of 
graduates has not been large. 



The economic question 

We may first consider the plain econom- 
ics of the case. One* of the common errors 

206 



FAEM MANAGERS 

of city men who go into farming is in over- 
capitalizing in buildings, on which they ex- 
pect a manager to make interest. Even an 
expensive country house that has nothing 
to do with the farm is often included. 
Over-capitalization in barns is nearly as 
bad. As much as $300 per cow has been 
expended for barns, and for only fairly 
good cows at that. This makes a tax of 
about $30 per cow per year. If one is ex- 
pecting to sell pure-bred stock, he may 
sometimes secure a profit on such buildings 
because of the advertisement that they 
furnish, but not because of their direct effi- 
ciency in the business. 

On the other hand, there is often too low 
an investment in productive capital. If the 
total farm capital is wisely invested, one 
may expect a good manager to be worth 
at least five per cent, of it. The average 
farmer, according to Warren, probably 
makes a salary of about seven per cent, 
above interest and business expenses, be- 
sides having the use of a house and such 
products as the farm furnishes. If wisely 
invested, a capital of $15,000 in land and 

207 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

equipment may justify the hiring of a man- 
ager for $1000 per year. 

The farm itself has a responsibility 

In a larger way, however, the difficulty 
has lain with the opportunities that have 
been opened to a well-trained man. It is 
natural and right that a college graduate 
should enter the line of work that pays him 
best and is most attractive to him ; and it is 
the proof of the value of an education by 
means of agriculture that it fits a man as 
well as other education does. If the college 
man were content to accept the low remu- 
neration of the hired man or the share- 
worker or the ordinary foreman, it would 
mean that his course of study had devel- 
oped neither power nor ideals. 

The farmer himself must meet the situa- 
tion. The institutions are beginning to do 
their part. The leading agricultural col- 
leges are now so well established, and are 
teaching in such direct and applicable 
ways, that they are creating a body of abil- 
ity and sentiment touching country life that 
has never been known before. This ability 

208 



FARM MANAGERS 

and sentiment is bound to express itself. 
The influence of these colleges and experi- 
ment stations will surely remake agricul- 
ture and redirect it. 

This redirection will not show itself in 
increasing the productiveness of the earth 
alone, although this must be the funda- 
mental effort and result. It must consist 
as well in reorganizing the business or 
commercial interests of agriculture, and in 
a radical change in the ideals and modes 
of living. We shall be able to increase the 
profitableness of farming when we have 
learned to apply our science, and to or- 
ganize it as a part of good business sys- 
tems. We are now in the epoch of the 
admiration of scientific fact itself, as if 
the mere knowledge of the laws underlying 
good crop and animal production can make 
a good farmer. 

The only salvation for agriculture is 
that it rise to meet the college man. This 
is not because the college man is infallible 
or the college final, but merely because his 
practice is to be rational, his abilities well 
directed, and his ideals cultivated. It does 

14 209 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

not follow that all farmers must be college- 
bred, but it must be true that the well- 
schooled man, other things being equal, 
must have the advantage in the long run. 

I do not mean by these remarks to imply 
that college men have not returned to the 
farm, for this would be distinctly untrue; 
but I must urge that it is as fairly incum- 
bent on the farm to bring the young men 
back as on the college to send them back. 
Education by means of agriculture is ac- 
tive and constructive: if the farm is to 
attract the college man, it must be some- 
thing more than passive and traditional. 

Neither must it be inferred, on the other 
hand, that the farming business is not now 
rising ; for this also would be a great error. 
But, except in isolated instances here and 
there, the business has not yet evolved to 
the point of full satisfaction to a college- 
trained man. The present evolution is 
being forced by great economic changes 
and large movements of populations, and 
some of the conspicuous non-adaptations of 
farming (of which the so-called '^aban- 
doned farms" is one) are evidences of it; 

210 



FARM MANAGERS 

but there must be a conscious reconstruc- 
tive tendency before the country will hold 
the well- schooled man in great numbers. 

The reconstructive movement 

This constructive tendency must arise 
largely from the college man himself, using 
the term college man broadly for all those 
who have been strongly influenced by the 
college point of view, whether actual stu- 
dents in colleges or not. There will soon be 
enough of these men to create public senti- 
ment and to set new standards in country 
living. They are beginning to be felt in 
agricultural societies and in the gradual 
redirection of rural institutions. It is not 
essential to this sentiment that all these 
men live on farms. The point is, that a 
new ideal of country life is rising as the 
result of facts that have been discovered 
and the new purposes that have been set in 
motion. What I have in mind is something 
very different from the kind of wonder- 
farming that is pictured in some of the 
current book and periodical writing, and 
which is founded chiefly on the ^ 'disco ver- 

211 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

ies-of-science'^ notion. I hope that we 
may have vision of something more real 
and fundamental than this: we look for 
something structural. 



3. HOW SHALL THE INEXPERIENCED 
COLLEGE MAN SECURE A FARM TRAINING? 

I have been speaking of college men who 
are well qualified, by experience and study, 
to become farm managers. " These men are 
comparable, in experience, with graduates 
of law schools who have had some years' 
experience in a lawyer's office or with 
graduates of medical schools who have 
had hospital practice and more. Many of 
them have had farm apprenticeship, and 
have the age, business training and judg- 
ment that fit them for independent work. 

There are other agricultural college 
men, however, of equal ability, who have 
not had farm training. What opportunities 
shall be provided for such men, in our 
scheme of education, to enable them to ac- 
quire experience? Here the farm itself 

212 



FARM MANAGERS 

must cooperate with the college, and far- 
mers carry a natural responsibility to con- 
tribute to this end. 

The graduate of a college of law reads 
law for a time before he enters practice; 
the graduate in architecture enters an 
architect's office; the graduate in medicine 
engages in hospital service; the graduate 
in mechanics enters a shop to learn the 
business ; yet it is expected that the gradu- 
ate in agriculture will be able at once to 
assume full responsibility for a big busi- 
ness, and he is censured if he makes a mis- 
take. The trouble is that there are yet no 
adequate opportunities in this country for 
the graduate in agriculture to learn the 
business or to test himself, if he needs such 
test, as there are for other students. Far- 
mers do not take students on such a basis. 
In some of the European countries, pro- 
vision is made for this farm training on 
actual farms. 

Most farms do not properly instruct 
the boys even before sending them to 
college. Farm practice should be learned 
at home, not at college. The net result is 

213 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

that while much is expected of the student 
in agriculture, little opportunity is afforded 
him in the way of any training that fitly 
supplements his college course. The agri- 
cultural colleges cannot do their best work 
for the farms until the farms come to their 
aid. Of no college is so much demanded as 
of the agricultural colleges, because they 
are called on not only to educate young 
men and women, but also to find the ways 
of making the farms produce the money 
that will enable the young people to go to 
college. They are not only educational, but 
economic and social agencies. 

Persons seem to expect more of gradu- 
ates of colleges of agriculture than of those 
of other kinds of colleges. They seem to 
think that these men will be able at once 
to do all kinds of farm work, tell just what 
the soil ^' needs," know what to do with 
animals in health and disease, and in par- 
ticular be able quickly to restore a run- 
down farm to profitableness and to be 
willing to do it ^^on shares.'' Persons do 
not seem to realize the fact that agriculture 
is a name not for one occupation, but for a 

214 



FARM MANAGERS 

series of many occupations, and every one 
of these occupations should require special 
training. The average college graduate is 
not yet a mature man ; he may not have had 
much practical experien<3e with more than 
one kind of farming, and of course this ex- 
perience cannot be gained at college; his 
judgment must be developed and proved. 
In contrast with these remarks, I ought 
to say that certain other persons expect 
too little of these college men ; or, in other 
words, they do not give them sufficient 
freedom and opportunity. In many cases 
they are given the title of manager, but not 
the power of manager. They may have no 
more opportunity for initiative than a good 
hired man. The matter is all the worse 
when, as very often happens, the employer 
is not himself a thorough farmer. It is not 
to be expected that an energetic young col- 
lege man, who wants to practise what he 
has learned, will be content or will work to 
best advantage if he is obliged to proceed 
under minute daily orders. He expects to 
assume responsibility, and he should be 
allowed this privilege just as rapidly as he 

215 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

shows himself to be capable of it. Persons 
who employ a manager must be prepared 
to give up the month-hand idea when they 
engage him. 

There is still another phase of the sub- 
ject to be mentioned : it takes time to bring 
a run-down farm into profitable produc- 
tiveness, and it is very frequently the run- 
down farm that the employer desires to 
put in the hands of a manager. No man is 
able to overcome seasons, or to change 
the underlying processes of nature. The 
problems must be worked out gradually. 
Farming is not the making of good crops in 
some one year: it is securing the average 
performance of a piece of land through a 
series of years. A run-down soil cannot be 
renovated and revived in the way that we 
repair a house. I am convinced that the 
time element is not enough considered by 
many persons who employ managers, and, 
as a result, the manager may be discharged 
before a rational course of action can come 
to natural maturity. 



216 



FAEM MANAGERS 



4. KEVIEW 



I have made the discussions in this chap- 
ter because I am convinced, from a consid- 
erable experience, that these things need to 
be said in order to put the subject before 
the people on its merits and to correct mis- 
apprehensions. In other occupations and 
professions there is a form of experience 
and custom by which we determine salaries 
and wages, and measure the performance 
of the man. In the reorganizing of agri- 
culture, we yet have no such standards. 

A course of college instruction in agri- 
culture, however complete, cannot be 
expected to do more for a man than a 
comparable course in law or medicine or 
mechanics can do for its students ; perhaps 
it can do even less, so far as practical re- 
sults are concerned, because every farm 
business is a very local problem. Yet a 
man should be much better prepared for 
practical farm-manager work by a college 
training than the same man would be with- 
out it. The competitions and complexities 

217 



THE TEAINING OF FARMERS 

of agricultural work are now so many that 
the very best training is required to enable 
a man to meet them with any degree of suc- 
cess. Untrained men are hopelessly handi- 
capped, and the disability will become more 
apparent as time goes on. The college man 
needs training in business after he leaves 
college; and he must learn the particular 
problems of the one enterprise that he is 
called on to handle. It is time that he re- 
ceive help, cooperation, and encouragement 
at the period when he is trying to get a 
hold. The farm must actively cooperate 
with the college in the training of farmers. 
I hope that I have been able to indicate, 
although imperfectly, a type of obligation 
to the student in agriculture that is sel- 
dom discussed, and to suggest to my reader 
that we need a redirection of our attitude 
toward the value of the services of these 
young men and the kind of encouragement 
that they should receive. 



218 



The College of Agriculture and 
THE State 

THE natural centers of free and spon- 
taneous leadership on rural ques- 
tions in the various states are the colleges 
of agriculture, that draw their support 
conjointly from the state and the nation. 
If any of these colleges are not taking 
the leadership, they are not meeting their 
opportunity or carrying their natural 
responsibility. 

These institutions should in the nature of 
the case be the great leaders in country 
life, because their work is founded on 
scholarship and is (or may be) wholly free 
from political or partisan domination and 
control. If any of them are in educational 
bondage, the fault lies not with the system. 

If the colleges have not met all expecta- 

219 



THE TEAINING OF FARMERS 

tions, it is largely because their facilities 
have been almost trivial as compared with 
the work they have been expected to do. 
For years they have been praying for 
funds and freedom to enable them to do 
their work. Whether they will in the 
future accomplish all that is expected of 
them will depend as much on the people as 
on the professors; in fact, in the end the 
people have control. 

These colleges are expensive. They are 
the most expensive of all colleges, because 
they must do so very many things, be pre- 
pared to give advice on every conceivable 
subject of country life, have so much land, 
so many different kinds of live-stock, such 
extensive orchards and grounds, reach so 
many special industries, and give such per- 
sonal and practical instruction to their 
students. This is exactly the opposite of 
the prevailing notion, at least until very 
recently. There are still some persons who 
think that a college of agriculture should 
be practically self-supporting, because it 
engages in farming ; yet I usually find that 
such persons have difficulty enough in 

220 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

making a farm pay as a farm, without ask- 
ing it to support teaching and experiments 
in the bargain. 

These colleges represent the state. 
Their general purpose is to aid in devel- 
oping the resources of the state, in its 
materials, its affairs, and its people. Their 
special range is the open country. Their 
primary field is to extend those industries 
and interests that rest on the producing 
power of the land. Their work is construc- 
tive. They should strongly influence, and 
perhaps even dominate, the agricultural 
and country-life work of the public- school 
system. 

Obligation on the part of the people 

It is not merely a set of institutions, com- 
peting with other institutions, that we are 
founding when we establish a system of 
colleges of agriculture. These colleges are 
only means or agencies of expanding the 
welfare of the commonwealth, and they 
should be thought of as a regular part of a 
state program. I hear it said that agri- 
cultural college men are '^ never satisfied'' 

221 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

with appropriations, as if the appropria- 
tions were requested for the purpose of 
self-aggrandizement or merely to enlarge 
an institution. I resent this attitude. 

Ideally, the responsible ofi&cers of a col- 
lege of agriculture should not be obliged to 
request appropriations. The state gov- 
ernment, or other organization represent- 
ing society, should acquaint itself with 
what things need to be done for agricul- 
tural education in the interest of the state 
itself and then place the necessary funds 
in the hands of those who are capable of 
using them wisely and hold these persons 
to strict account. A college of agriculture 
should not be obliged to secure the funds 
with which it may serve the people; it 
should be allowed to devote all its efforts 
to serving the people. It is the duty of 
the responsible head of such a college to 
acquaint the people with the needs of their 
institution. The college should not with- 
hold the knowledge of anything that is 
required. Having stated the needs and 
requirements, the question of how far the 
institution shall be enabled to do its work 

222 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

ought to rest with the people themselves. I 
am aware that this may seem to be Utopian. 
I do not expect that such a condition will 
come all at once, but even a partial change 
of attitude toward constructive state work 
would solve more difficulties than we can 
now appreciate, and this change ought not 
to be difficult to secure ; and the colleges of 
agriculture cannot do their best work until 
this attitude develops. This will come 
when government by influence begins to 
pass away. The attitude of the public 
toward these questions is wrong. 

Different kinds of colleges of agriculture 

The scope of any given college of agri- 
culture must be determined by the size and 
nature of the commonwealth, and the char- 
acter of other educational institutions that 
have already been established in the state. 
When the state has divided its work of 
higher education between a university and 
a college of agriculture, the development 
of the college will necessarily be unlike 
that of a college of agriculture that is a 
part of the university. When the two are 

223 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

separate, it is the obligation of the state 
administration so to define the work of 
each that harmony and cooperation will 
result. Hostility between the two lessens 
the efficiency of each. It is particularly 
important that neither one of the institu- 
tions should become possessed of the idea 
that its work is in the nature of the case 
more important than that of the other, 
either because the one may represent what 
is conceived to be the broader education or 
because the other may represent what is 
thought to be the more practical and neces- 
sary. The province of educational insti- 
tutions is to fight ignorance, not to fight 
each other. 

There will necessarily be colleges of 
agriculture of differing kinds and grades. 
In a small state, the college will natu- 
rally be less extensive than in a large 
and wealthy state, but it may be none the 
less effective for its commonwealth. All 
the colleges, whether separate or con- 
nected, should, of course, be equally free 
to develop a wide range of subjects. 
Some will become essentially agricultural 

224 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

or country-life universities ; we need a few 
of this type. 

The teaching of agriculture of college 
and university grade ought not to be con- 
fined to colleges of agriculture. All uni- 
versities, at least, on their own account 
and for their own best development, will 
in time have departments of agriculture, if 
they are real universities, as much as they 
have departments of language or of en- 
gineering. They cannot neglect any fun- 
damental branches of learning. There 
may be need, also, of a kind of agricultural 
work that can best be done in an institution 
that is independent of direct state support, 
and that is not at once responsible to popu- 
lar will. 

I propose now to sketch some of the 
directions in which an institution of the 
agricultural-university class may develop. 
I am doing this because the public has not 
had its imagination directed to this kind of 
an educational equipment. 



15 225 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

1. SCOPE OF A HIGHLY DEVELOPED COLLEGE OF 
AGRICULTURE 

While a college of agriculture is con- 
cerned directly with increasing the pro- 
ducing power of land, its activities cannot 
be limited narrowly to this field. If it is a 
large institution, it should stand broadly 
for rural civilization. It must include 
within its activities such a range of sub- 
jects as will enable it to develop an entire 
philosophy or scheme of country life. 

On the production side, a first-rate col- 
lege of agriculture deals with all crops, the 
means of growing them and handling them 
and of caring for them in health and dis- 
ease; and with all domesticated or con- 
trolled animals, the means of rearing them 
and handling them and of caring for them 
in health and disease. The crops include 
all plants reared by man from the soil, or 
controlled and used by him, as all grains, 
all forage, all fibers, all timbers and for- 
ests, all fruits and garden vegetables and 
flowers, and whatever else in the vegetable 

226 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

kingdom he produces or iraproves by fore- 
sight and care to supply the wants of his 
fellowmen. The animals include all tamed 
mammals and birds, all fish that are reared 
and bred, the bees, domestic pets, and all 
others that contribute food, fur, pelts, and 
other products for the maintenance and 
comfort of man. 

Aside from this, such a college stands 
for the relations of the man to his commu- 
nity and to his time. All civilization devel- 
ops out of industries and occupations ; and 
so it comes that agriculture is properly 
a civilization rather than a congeries of 
crafts. The colleges of agriculture repre- 
sent this civilization, in its material, busi- 
ness, and human relations. Therefore, they 
are not class institutions, representing 
merely trades and occupations. The task 
before the colleges of agriculture is noth- 
ing less than to direct and to aid in devel- 
oping the entire rural civilization; and 
this task should place those who make them 
within the realm of statesmanship. 



227 



THE TEAINING OF FARMERS 

Three great lines of work 

The colleges of agriculture have three 
proper lines of work: the regular or ordi- 
nary teaching; the discovery of truth, or 
research; the extending of their work to 
all the people. I mention these in the order 
in which they have been recognized. These 
colleges are founded on the Land-grant 
Act of 1862; the experiment station side 
was added in 1887; the extension side is 
not yet regularly recognized by Congress, 
although it soon must be acknowledged, 
but it is established in most of the colleges 
to some degree. 

All progress and increased efficiency is 
conditioned on knowledge of the facts and 
laws of nature. It is impossible to have a 
good college of agriculture without careful 
research work as its basis. Therefore, 
every effort must be made to secure able 
investigators and to enable them to pursue 
their work with perfect freedom, and not 
to hold them rigidly merely to problems of 
immediately so-called practical impor- 
tance. 

228 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

The extent of special knowledge about 
every crop and every kind of animal has 
now come to be so great, and so many per- 
sons are asking definite questions and 
deserve such explicit and careful replies, 
that teachers are becoming more and more 
cautious about giving advice. This calls for 
a greater degree of specialization and con- 
sequently many more teachers and experts, 
each teacher teaching only that which he 
personally knows. 

Crops and live-stock 

There are nearly one hundred persons on 
the staffs of certain colleges of agriculture, 
and yet there are not half enough to make 
it possible to answer anywhere near all 
the questions that are asked by farmers in 
person and by letter. There must be spe- 
cialists in cereals, potatoes, hay and 
forage, the different kinds of fruits, the 
different kinds of vegetables, the different 
kinds of flower crops, forest crops, nursery 
crops, in cattle, sheep, horses and mules, 
swine, bees, fish and other aquatic animals, 
all the different kinds of poultry. New 

229 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

varieties and types of plants must be bred 
to adapt crops exactly to special condi- 
tions. And all these specialties must rest 
on the fundamental sciences of physiology, 
physics, chemistry, meteorology, biology, 
and the others, all of which must also be 
represented by strong teachers. Every 
precaution must be taken to develop these 
fundamental sciences coordinately with the 
application work on the farms. It is now 
time for the colleges of agriculture to stand 
firmly for a high-class curriculum, even 
though all the people are not ready for it. 

These subjects must be developed both 
as a means of teaching students and for 
the purpose of developing the agricultural 
productiveness of the state. In order to 
illustrate the relation of such effort to the 
general economic welfare of the state, I 
have chosen examples in New York state. 
In other states, other groups of subjects 
would come to the fore. 

Particular examples of crops and live-stock 

Nearly all the most important field crops 
of New York have been neglected, and no 

230 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

crops have received the study that is re- 
quired to enable the grower to get the most 
from them. There is always a tendency to 
study local crops and specialties, to the 
relative exclusion of the great underlying 
staples. I cite hay and pasture, live-stock, 
forests, and fish as examples. 

Grass is the fundamental crop of the 
state, as it is of most of the northern 
states. Of the 15,599,986 acres of improved 
land in farms in New York, 5,154,965 are in 
hay and forage, and 4,366,683 acres are in 
all other crops. The remainder, 6,078,338, is 
probably mostly in pasture. The improved 
farm land is, therefore, approximately 

One-third in hay 

One-third in pasture 

One-third in all other crops. 
The value of the grass crop is no less strik- 
ing. The hay crop is worth as much as all 
the dairy products. It is worth nearly as 
much as all other crops combined. It is 
worth over five times as much as all the 
orchard products. We have no estimate of 
the values of pastures, but the hay and 
pasture crops are undoubtedly worth more 

231 



THE TRAINING^ OF FARMERS 

than all the animals and animal products 
sold, and are worth more than all the other 
plants or plant products. They constitute 
considerably over one-third of the total 
products of New York farms. The value 
of hay has increased 66 per cent, since 
these figures were taken by the last census. 
In spite of these facts, New York and other 
states have done comparatively little to aid 
in grass production. There is as much op- 
portunity for improvement in grass pro- 
duction as there is in fruit production. 
There should be at least one man to give 
his entire time to a study of the hay ques- 
tion. He should conduct large numbers of 
cooperative experiments and should study 
the great hay crop from seed-sowing to 
marketing. This is largely an extension 
enterprise but will, at the same time, result 
in much increased knowledge. One man 
should devote his entire time to the pasture 
problem. He should make a study of pres- 
ent pasture conditions throughout the 
state and should try the new kinds of 
grasses, as brome grass, in the different 
regions. There should be cooperative 

232 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

pasture experiments in which different 
mixtures and treatments are used and in 
which the results are measured by pastur- 
ing each area separately. Both of these 
lines of work would soon require a larger 
number of persons working on them, if the 
situation were met adequately. 

There is no point in developing meadows 
and pastures unless live-stock is produced 
to consume the crop. In fact, the pos- 
sibility of developing them depends to a 
great extent on the animals themselves. 
The northeastern states need to give new 
and greater attention to the general live- 
stock interests, not only for the profit that 
may come from the stock itself, but also 
that better forms of diversified agriculture 
may be established and that fertility of 
lands may be maintained. When the fun- 
damental crop is by nature grass, a highly 
developed animal husbandry must be a 
necessary part of the agriculture. Such 
crops and such plans of farm management 
must be encouraged as will make it pos- 
sible to feed the live-stock profitably. The 
East has lost its supremacy in sheep. In 

233 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

1850, there were about three and a half -mil- 
lion sheep in New York. There has been 
a continuing and marked decline in the 
number, until in 1900 there were less than 
one million ; and yet all the natural condi- 
tions for a good sheep husbandry are pres- 
ent. The rearing of horses should be an 
important part of farm business in the 
East. More swine and more beef cattle are 
needed. Not only this, but poultry and 
dairy interests should have increased at- 
tention. 

Another great cropping interest that 
needs to be developed is the forests. Tim- 
ber is as much a crop as corn or potatoes. 
It should be planted, cared for, and har- 
vested. In the last census year, New York 
led all the states in the value of farm- forest 
products. The value was about $7,500,000 
worth. More than one-third of the state is 
in timber or woodlots. Very little of this 
vast area is yielding anywhere near a full 
crop. The ordinary forest is half waste. 
Nearly every large farm in most parts of 
the northeastern states has its woodlot, as 
it has its meadow, its pasture, or its wheat 

234 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

field. Farmers should raise the larger 
part of their farm lumber and timber, as 
they should raise their own meat and but- 
ter and fruit and silage. It is all the more 
remarkable that the farm forests do not 
receive attention since they exert great in- 
fluence in maintaining the sources and con- 
trolling the flow of streams, in preventing 
floods, in protecting game, and in making 
the country attractive. Their value ex- 
tends far beyond the particular farm on 
which they stand. The proper destiny of 
much of the so-called ^ ^ abandoned ^ ' farm 
land is to grow forests. Much of the re- 
mote and agriculturally unprofitable land 
should be owned by townships and counties 
(or by the state), and be used for forest. 
In time these lands should return a fair 
revenue to the communities. 

We think of farming as a dry-land busi- 
ness. It is a fact, however, that an acre of 
water may be made to yield more food than 
an average acre of land. There are tens of 
thousands of acres of fresh water in many 
states, and great expanses of salt water. 
In time we shall cultivate these fresh waters 

235 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

and the sea shores. The man who owns a 
lake or pond, or has the use of one, will in 
the future find it to be valuable agricul- 
tural property. We shall breed domestic 
varieties of fish as we do of pigs or poul- 
try. Some of the European peoples are 
doing this now. We are still stocking lakes 
and streams largely with game fish for 
sportsmen. As competition increases, 
however, ponds must be stocked in the 
same spirit as pastures are stocked. We 
have passed the hunting stage with cattle 
and sheep. We shall come to a scientific 
development and utilization of water fields. 
We shall not allow people to poison and 
pollute the ponds and lakes any more than 
the wheat fields. After we stock the ponds 
and streams with young fish, we shall pro- 
vide ways whereby the fish may live and 
thrive, as we till and fertilize corn or 
any other crop. This means the devel- 
opment of natural fish forage and also 
such control as will maintain the balance 
of nature. We know practically nothing 
about fish forage and the means of growing 
it in streams and lakes. We have estab- 

236 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

lished experiment stations for land crops, 
but not for water crops. Whenever waters 
are impounded, the possibilities of making 
them breeding grounds for food fish should 
also be considered. It is probable that 
other aquatic animals than fish, or semi- 
aquatic ones, will be regularly grown under 
eontrol in time ; and it is not too much to ex- 
pect that we may find new uses for much of 
our marsh land. There are many aquatic 
plants that are of value; but all I aim 
to do at present is to challenge attention to 
an undeveloped line of agricultural effort. 
In developing all our great agricultural 
interests, we are also providing the very 
best means of educating students through 
the knowledge that is gained; and to edu- 
cate young men and women by means of the 
common affairs of country life, is the pri- 
mary object of a college of agriculture. 

Household subjects 

But the kinds of crops and of animals 
and the fundamental subjects in sciences 
and language and arts, do not cover all the 
teacherships that a good college of agri- 

237 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

culture must have. While the home is the 
center or pivot of our civilization, it is the 
last thing to be taught in schools. We 
have worked out better plans for feeding 
and rearing live-stock than for humans. 
The federal government may investigate 
diseases of sheep in the various states, but 
it may not investigate diseases of men and 
women. The whole range of household 
subjects must be taught, and if so, there 
must be specialists in food, sanitation^ 
nursing, house-building, house-furnishing, 
and similar subjects; and all these depart- 
ments of knowledge must be housed, 
equipped and maintained. It is probably 
more important that we now attack the 
home side of country life than any other 
phase of the work. 

The mechanical side 

All the manufacture phases of country 
life must be developed. The dairy depart- 
ments of the colleges represent one of these 
phases. All the subjects relating to the 
canning, drying, and preserving of fruits 
are practically untouched in the colleges, 

238 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

and yet nothing is more important to the 
development of our fruit and vegetable- 
gardening interests. The curing of meats 
and home manufacture of animal products 
must be taught; and also the whole great 
question of refrigeration and storage. 

The whole subject of mechanical power 
and of the best use of machinery must be 
developed on the American farm. With 
all our knack for invention, we are not the 
foremost people in the application of small 
power to farm work and housework. The 
necessity of economizing human labor must 
itself force the use of gasoline and other 
engines, small water power, electrical 
power, and others, on thousands and mil- 
lions of farms; and the use of such ma- 
chines will set new ideals into the minds of 
men. With the development of long-dis- 
tance transmission of electric energy, it 
will be increasingly possible for such 
power to be diverted to farm uses ; and yet 
we do not seem to be giving much attention 
to this subject, although the development 
is coming in Germany and other countries. 
Every good farm must in time have its own 

239 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

power ; but we must first train up a race of 
mechanic-minded farmers. Even the com- 
mon farm machinery is not usually under- 
stood by those who use it, nor, with all our 
invention of machines for the easier and 
more wholesale farm practices, have we 
yet developed farm machinery to anywhere 
near its possible extent of perfection or 
necessity. The burden of household labor 
is to be solved in part by better mechanical 
contrivances. Colleges of mechanic arts 
cannot be asked to develop this subject for 
the farms, for they have their legitimate 
professional work; and, moreover, the 
problems of farm mechanics are largely 
agricultural. The subject must be devel- 
oped as part of a constructive philosophy 
of rural life. 

Engineering questions 

Similar remarks may be made of some 
of the applications of engineering. The 
lay-out of the farm, the running of levels, 
drainage, irrigation, the making of farm 
bridges, the construction of farm roads 
and of highways, and the development of a 

240 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

rational point of view on engineering prob- 
lems as they affect country life, are all of 
the first importance. The engineer is to 
exert tremendous influence on the develop- 
ment of our rural civilization, playing a 
part that we little realize to-day. The 
whole system of highways and byways will 
be evolved, as one part of the development 
of our natural resources. This evolution 
must depend in good part on the attitude of 
the farming people. I am afraid that we 
are in danger of making the mistake of 
developing our highways only from trans- 
ported material, as we have continued to 
be in error in depending for fertility on 
material mined in some other part of the 
globe. The best philosophy of farm life is 
to develop the business directly from na- 
tive home resources; this must be equally 
true of roads, at least of the greater num- 
ber of them. What we now very much 
need is knowledge of how to build service- 
able highways with the dirt and other 
material of the neighborhood. A good- 
roads school could well be added to a col- 
lege of agriculture. A course of at least 
16 241 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

three months might be offered to all high- 
way commissioners and overseers in the 
state, in order that they might be able to 
carry out the instructions of engineers and 
properly to care for the roads under their 
charge; and laws should be so framed 
as to allow any township to send such offi- 
cer to the school. The instruction should 
include not only simple road-making ques- 
tions, but such economic and general 
questions as the relation of highways to 
local taxation and agricultural affairs, the 
proper distribution of highway service, and 
the general development of the community 
and state. A state cannot afford to ex- 
pend large sums for highways until the 
local officers are properly trained for their 
duties. The whole su'bject is broadly an 
agricultural question, and the instruction 
should be sympathetically tied to other 
agricultural instruction. 

Farm architecture 

The point of view on the proper kinds 
of buildings for the rural country must be 
radically changed before such buildings 

242 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

can be perfectly adapted to their uses or 
country life be wholly attractive. We are 
so accustomed to our buildings, both in 
country and city, that we do not think to 
challenge them; and yet there are rela- 
tively very few buildings in the world that 
are either good to look at or are well 
adapted to their ends. All architecture is 
either good or bad, whatever the building 
costs: it must have good proportions and 
exactly meet the needs for which it is con- 
structed. Certain boxes appeal to us in 
their attractive shape, yet we forget that 
shape and proportion are the first con- 
siderations in the good looks of buildings. 
All the sanitary waterworks and other 
conveniences of modern residences must 
come into country districts, and this will 
call for new plans of buildings. How to 
build a house to save steps, to cause it to 
be sanitary and cheerful, to insure good 
construction, to make it comfortable and 
durable, are questions of careful planning ; 
and the more we build by merely copying 
other buildings or depending on the wit of 
the carpenter, the longer will we continue 

243 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

to be held by tradition. The silent and 
continuing influence of the building in 
which it lives, has a powerful effect on the 
child. The proper building of barns, 
dairies, stables, creameries, poultry houses, 
and all the other constructions of the farm, 
must now receive expert attention. The 
experts cannot be practising architects, 
because the fees in farm-building are in- 
sufficient; the regular architects do not 
study these questions. The experts must 
come from the colleges of agriculture or 
other public institutions. Within a genera- 
tion, the greater part of all the farm build- 
ings in North America should be rebuilt. 
Who is going to direct the work! 

The farms of a college of agriculture 
should have a number of model farm 
houses of different cost, with the grounds 
properly laid out and planted, as examples 
to the people of the state. 

The landscape 

Related to this is the development of the 
landscape features of the open country,— 
the proper subdivision and lay-out of 

244 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

farms, the placing of buildings for best 
effect, the plan and planting of all yards 
and roadsides and school grounds and 
church grounds, the preservation and im. 
provement of scenery. All this is neces- 
sary to make the country as attractive and 
as satisfying as the city. It is also an 
economic question. Plans are already 
under way in a few of the states for the 
parking of the entire area of the common- 
wealth in such a way as to make all parts 
accessible, to develop what is best in every 
part, to preserve all good natural features. 
This idea will extend to every part of the 
country in time, developing local patriot- 
ism and increasing the values of property. 
Scenery as well as soil can be capitalized, 
and made to yield a profit. The increase 
in values of farm property is coming 
largely as a result of good roads and gen- 
eral improvement, rather than merely 
from better farming. 

The leadership for this general improve- 
ment work should be expected to come 
from a college of agriculture. I would not 
appropriate the professional work of the 

245 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

landscape architect; but he does not look 
for clients among the working farmers, and 
he could not secure fees enough to make it 
worth the while to devote his life to strictly 
rural work. Yet all the persons on the 
land are entitled to a developed point of 
view on surroundings and scenery. 

Farm management 

All the technical special work can be 
tied together by a department of farm 
management, which develops in the stu- 
dents' minds a business philosophy or sys- 
tem. There is great need of information 
on the planning and lay-out of farms. 
Even in so simple a matter as the arrange- 
ment of fields, there is need for much study 
and experiment. The whole cropping 
scheme on the farms should be overhauled. 
Special investigations should be made of 
farming systems for hill lands, now that 
the older farming is being driven from 
these regions. The entire subject of farm 
accounting must be attacked in a new way. 
The ordinary bookkeeping will not apply. 
In visiting practically every farmer in one 

246 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

of the counties of an eastern state, not one 
man was found who knew how much it cost 
him to produce milk or to raise any of his 
crops. 

If the different courses in a highly devel- 
oped college of agriculture are not tied to- 
gether, the student is likely to lose himself 
in details and to fail to construct for him- 
self a business plan that will work. 

The human problems 

The people themselves and the affairs 
whereby they live must also be studied. 
These are economic and social questions, 
concerned with the whole problem of how 
the people organize their lives and their 
business. On the economics side are the 
great questions of taxation, distribution of 
products, marketing, business organiza- 
tion, and the like. The whole relation of 
the man and woman to the community in 
respect to social intercourse, schools, 
churches, societies, the broad influence of 
telephones and roads and machinery on 
rural life, the social results of immigration, 
the scheme of rural government, the poli- 

247 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

cies of cooperation in a thousand ways, 
and, in short, the structure of rural society, 
constitute a special field of inquiry. For 
cities many of these questions have been 
studied with care, and measures of relief 
have been set on foot when they were 
found to be needed; but in the country 
these great human problems are practi- 
cally untouched. There is as much need of 
an agricultural application of economic 
and social studies as there is need of an 
agricultural application of chemistry; in 
fact, there is greater need of it, for at the 
bottom all civilization is but a complex of 
these human questions. 

Training teachers 

If the public schools must teach persons 
how to live, the effort will call for a com- 
plete change in their methods and point of 
view. New teachers must be trained. We 
cannot expect any very great progress by 
merely adding new work to old methods or 
asking present teachers to take on a new 
philosophy of service. The whole school 
system must be redirected and recon- 

248 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

structed from the bottom up. This means 
that in rural districts, pupils shall be edu- 
cated by means of rural subjects as well as 
by other means. Of course, all this new 
effort will come slowly (we could not as- 
similate it in any other way), but we must 
prepare for it, nevertheless. At least a 
few of the colleges of agriculture should 
be enabled to establish normal depart- 
ments so that they can contribute to pre- 
pare teachers to handle the agricultural 
work in the public schools. There is no 
greater work now before these colleges.^ 

The outside or extension work 

What I have thus far said has referred 
mostly to the inside or so-called academic 
work of the colleges of agriculture. I now 
call attention to the outside or extension 
work. 

1 1 have stated my convictions as to the means of train- 
ing such teachers in a pamphlet " On the training of per- 
sons to teach agriculture in the public schools," published 
by the U. S. Bureau of Education, Washington, 1908. 
This also suggests the relationship between training- 
schools and the colleges of agriculture. A discussion of 
the point of view in teaching may be found in " The Nature- 
Study Idea" (third edition ; Macmillan). 

17 249 



THE TEAINING OF FARMERS 

By extension work, I mean all kinds of 
teaching with the people at their homes 
and on the farms. The three great phases 
or sides of agricultural college work, as I 
have said (page 228), are the experiment 
or research, the regular college teaching, 
and the outside teaching. The college 
teaching must be founded directly on the 
knowledge gained in research, and the ex- 
tension work must be founded on both. 

A college of agriculture cannot serve the 
state as it is capable of doing without en- 
gaging in many kinds of extension work. 
It ought to serve farmers who cannot go 
to college, or who do not know what a col- 
lege is. The college must be taken to the 
people. All state colleges should become 
a real part of the machinery of society (or 
the state), participating directly in all 
work for the good of the people, so far as 
such work comes within the range of their 
subject-matter. The agricultural colleges, 
thereby, may express the needs and the 
ideals of the people on the land. 

Although much extension work of an 
agricultural nature has been done, it is 

250 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

nevertheless weak and fragmentary as 
compared with what needs to be accom- 
plished. A broad system or plan, national 
in its scope, is now needed, to rouse the 
entire open country and to set at work the 
ferment of new ideas and new practices. 

I am not to be understood as saying that 
extension work with farm people is the 
exclusive province of the colleges of agri- 
culture. Other colleges, universities and 
schools may engage in it with satisfaction 
to themselves and the people, if they are 
equipped for the work; and it is always 
well to have several points of view on the 
same line of effort. The regular colleges 
of agriculture are the institutions that are 
at present best qualified or equipped for 
this form of extension teaching, and it is 
to be expected that they will always hold 
the leadership in the agricultural phases 
of the work. In extension teaching for 
farm people, we need a cooperative effort, 
conducted on a wide and comprehensive 
plan, between the technical and the so- 
called liberal sides. 



251 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

Kinds of extension work 

Extension work in agriculture includes 
all effective personal acquaintanceship 
with the farmers of the state; all inspec- 
tion of farms that is not legal and police in 
character; the giving of advice by corre- 
spondence; publication of an educatiotial 
nature; cooperation with societies and 
organizations; advisory and cooperative 
work with schools ; the organizing of boys ' 
and girls* clubs in schools and country 
districts; the conducting of reading- 
courses for farmers, farmers* wives and 
rural school-teachers; experiments or 
demonstrations on farms; running of 
**farm trains'*; holding of *^ farmers* 
weeks** and other conventions; lectures, 
itinerant schools, and the like; and all 
species' of helpfulness and advice to the 
people on the land. The extension depart- 
ment of a college of agriculture should be 
a means of arousing the country people, 
and then of helping and guiding them. It 
will be effective in proportion as it works 

252 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

harmoniously and full-heartedly with all 
other agencies for rural progress. 

Lectures and traveling teachers 

The best vehicle for much of the exten- 
sion work is a public lecture- service, and 
this service will naturally develop. This 
raises the question as to the proper place 
for farmers' institute service. Histori- 
cally, the institutes have developed in dif- 
ferent ways, some of them issuing from 
colleges of agriculture, some of them from 
state departments of agriculture, and some 
of them from a separate or special organi- 
zation. If they were to be developed anew 
to-day, they would naturally issue from the 
colleges of agriculture, if the colleges in the 
different states were capable of handling 
them, because they are educational agen- 
cies and because the extension enterprise 
of the college must on its own account de- 
velop similar work. There is a popular 
impression that farmers' institutes will 
soon have served their purpose and will 
naturally discontinue. I doubt whether 

253 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

this is true. It certainly will not be true 
when they constitute part of a well-organ- 
ized extension-teaching scheme. The na- 
ture of their work will change from year 
to year, as any other living work changes ; 
but it will always be necessary to instruct 
the farm people at their homes. It will be 
increasingly necessary to substitute dem- 
onstration and laboratory work for much 
of the lecturing. We must develop a new 
type of institute man, unlike the college 
professor on the one hand and the so- 
called practical farmer on the other. These 
men must be trained for this kind of public 
work, as carefully as other men are 
trained to be chemists or engineers. They 
should live for at least part of the year on 
the land, and they should also be connected 
with an institution that can keep them in 
touch with the best and latest information. 
In other words, they should be farmers as 
well as students, and students as well as 
farmers. The regular college or experi- 
ment-station specialist will be called on 
here and there when expert knowledge of 
a particular kind is wanted, but his main 

254 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

effort should not be diverted from his reg- 
ular work. The institute teacher, in all 
the states, will then be chosen with the 
same care that a college or experiment 
station chooses the members of its staff; 
his teaching will be as carefully watched 
and supervised. Under these conditions 
the institutes will endure. 

Teaching on farms 

I regard certain kinds of demonstration 
work on farms as of the greatest teaching 
value, if it is conducted by a good teacher. 
Our educational methods have been greatly 
improved by the introduction of the labo- 
ratory, whereby a student is set at work 
with a personal problem. The laboratory 
work may be the actual observation and 
study of a plant disease or an animal dis- 
ease, of a rock, a soil, a physical phenom- 
enon, the making of a school-garden, the 
making of cheese or butter, the feeding of 
a cow or horse, the incubating of eggs, 
work in an orchard or greenhouse, the 
planning of grounds or buildings, or what- 
ever other actual work that it is worth 

255 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

while to do under the guidance of a 
teacher. Now, a man's farm is his labora- 
tory. No one may direct him how to man- 
age his farm; but a good teacher coming 
to his place may set him into new lines of 
thinking and put him in the way of helping 
himself. In a moment of my younger en- 
thusiasm I once wrote that every farm in 
a state should be visited at least once 
each year by a good teacher. My maturer 
judgment leads me to expand the statement 
to the effect that every farm in every state 
should be considered as one part in an 
underlying fabric of human evolution, and 
that in the interest of society every farm 
should ultimately be known to some one 
who represents society, to the end that that 
farm may be made a more effective unit in 
the great plan. 

Whenever an agricultural problem is 
worked out in the laboratory, its applica- 
tion should be at once widely demonstrated 
in the field under actual farm or garden 
conditions, and this of itself will require 
a large corps of high-class men. This will 
relieve the continuing demand for local 

256 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

experiment stations. Field laboratories 
will need to be established in the localities 
until the application of the problem to the 
locality is worked out. I think (as I have 
said on pages 6, 73) that some of the aid 
rendered to special communities and inter- 
ests, however, should be paid for directly 
by the communities themselves so far as 
the services of the expert or agent are con- 
cerned. 

Teaching on farms I consider, therefore, 
to be essential to rural progress. What- 
ever has thus far been accomplished in 
this kind of teaching is the merest be- 
ginning of what a state would profit by. 
This kind of teaching will be most effec- 
tive when it can follow or be made a part 
of the survey or inventory work that I 
have advised (page 32). 

Local leaders 

If a college of agriculture is to extend 
itself over the state, it will need to have 
local agents or representatives, who will 
keep the institution informed of the needs 
of the locality and be prepared to give 

257 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

advice and to look out for the agricultural 
welfare of the people. This agent should 
be to agricultural interests what the 
teacher is to educational interests and the 
pastor to religious interests. This type of 
local leader has already been set to work 
in Canada, and beginnings in an experi- 
mental way are also being made elsewhere. 



2. THE WORK IS UPON US 

All this may seem to be far away to the 
philosopher and the dreamer, but the plain 
people are now ready. Every college of 
agriculture receives requests and demands 
from the folks on the farms and in the 
rural schools that it cannot adequately 
meet ; and something must be done to meet 
these calls if the rural problem is to find 
solution and if farming is to escape from 
tradition. 

The institutions are even now well de- 
voted to working out many such welfare 
problems as I have sketched. The ideals 
are the product of a few far-seeing persons 

258 



I 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

who have not been in bondage to educational 
tradition or pedagogical theory and who 
for twenty-five and fifty years have been 
trying to make education meet the plain 
needs of life. These purposes have been 
placed into the institutions by persons who 
have seen the farm problem rather than 
the college problem. 

These colleges of agriculture are forcing 
a new definition of education. The institu- 
tion does not passively accept students who 
come : all persons in the commonwealth are 
properly students of a state educational 
institution, but very few of them yet have 
registered; nor is it necessary that any 
great proportion of them should leave 
home in order to receive some of the bene- 
fits of the institution. It is the obligation 
of such an institution to serve all the peo- 
ple, and it is equally the obligation of all 
the people to make the institution such that 
it can exercise its proper functions ; and all 
this can be brought about without sacri- 
ficing any worthy standards of education. 

The work of these institutions, therefore, 
is not to be judged merely by formalities 

259 



THE TRAINING OF FARMERS 

of entrance and curriculum, but by the 
character and spirit of the enterprise. They 
must of course maintain standards of ad- 
ministration and scholarship as high as 
those of other institutions, but they must 
be allowed to work out their proper con- 
tribution to educational progress. 

The results of scientific work are begin- 
ning to be apparent in the attitude toward 
country-life questions. The investigations 
have challenged all the old ideas and meth- 
ods, and all practices are now in the pro- 
cess of becoming rational. The extent of 
scientific investigation in the interest of 
agriculture is unparalleled in its scope and 
organization; this world-wide effort is 
bound to work itself out in wholly new and 
more effective schemes of life ; and when 
the scientific or truth- seeking spirit be- 
comes dominant in country life, it will 
mean the end not only of blind haphazard 
in farming but of patronage and ''influ- 
ence" in government; for it is as neces- 
sary that rural government (and all gov- 
ernment) be scientific as that agriculture 
be scientific. There can never be a good 

260 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

country life until the government of the 
open country is founded on fact, evidence, 
and reason, and is propagated with the 
vigor and confidence of men and women 
who have arrived at some degree of mas- 
tery of their conditions. 

It is the research and educational insti- 
tutions devoted to agriculture that are 
bringing this new time to pass. They are 
setting forth new ways of attacking the 
countryman's problems,— the direct way 
of first determining causes and then work- 
ing out a line of action. This will con- 
tribute directly to self-government in all 
the localities because it encourages self- 
action. The ordinary political means of 
encouraging self-government are second- 
ary and often only factitious and tempo- 
rary. A college of agriculture is not merely 
an institution of learning, in the old mean- 
ing ; it must have within it such a sense of 
service, such a range of subjects, and such 
an integrity of organization as will enable 
it to attack all distinctly rural questions 
and to bring a united policy to bear on the 
whole problem of rural civilization. 

261 



THE TKAINING OF FARMERS 

The college of agriculture cannot, of 
course, attack all the problems of rural 
communities directly, but it can set forces 
and activities in motion that will go a long 
way toward solving many of the questions 
not immediately within its sphere. The 
very difficult farm-labor problem is a case 
in point. The stringency in farm labor 
should be alleviated by various forms of 
public action; but the final solution of the 
difficulty lies in such a redirection of coun- 
try life as will enable the situation to take 
care of itself. It cannot be expected that 
labor may be found in enormous quantities 
for very brief periods in the year and im- 
ported bodily into country districts; nor 
that the individual farmer may look for 
satisfactory results from hired" help that 
is brought in from the outside and that has 
no connection with the life or interests of 
the rural community. The present scarcity 
of farm labor is in large part a symptom of 
an imperfectly developed rural society, and 
the correction must come slowly through a 
process of education. 

The public begins to realize the situation 

262 



COLLEGE AND STATE 

and to appreciate the contribution that in- 
dustrial education is making to the common 
good. The people on the farms are begin- 
ning to lend a hand : I would have them still 
more completely realize their responsibility 
and thereby actively help the work to grow, 
in the interest not only of farming but of 
the national welfare. 

It is incumbent on all good citizens, 
everywhere, to help forward the rural civil- 
ization as actively as the urban civiliza- 
tion, for both are equally in need of the 
best service of every man and woman. 
The commercial and social isolation of 
the farm is passing. The country town is 
no longer the market and the center of 
interest. The farmer is rapidly becoming 
a citizen of the world. All his problems 
must have a larger treatment* than they 
have ever had before. 



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